数据终端业务和媒体业务矛盾重重：彭博社必须找到新出路

    在彭博社，《商业周刊》和电视部门加起来每年要损失数亿美元，这些亏损都由数据终端部门来填补。据Politico报道称，迈克尔•布隆伯格拿出的应对办法是一种公司达尔文主义，他让个人或团队彼此竞争，来看看究竟谁能够胜出。

    “许多员工把迈克尔•布隆伯格的管理风格称作‘把猫放进袋子里’，看看哪只能活着爬出来。在2013年12月《财富》杂志的一篇文章中，有个比喻就是‘一个袋子里有五只猫’。而在今年《纽约邮报》的故事里，则有‘六只猫’。某消息源向Politico表示，有几只猫并不重要。问题的关键不在于哪只猫能活着出来，而在于迈克尔•布隆伯格要把猫放进袋子。等这些猫都死掉以后，‘他就会再去弄一袋新猫，’消息源表示。”

    至少在目前阶段，彭博社的数据业务还能产生大量收益，足以让公司从容地构想大规模的免费网络战略，或是找出从一个用户群过渡到另一个用户群的方法。从这个意义上看，终端业务有点像美国在线的拨号上网部门，在开放网络已经赢得胜利，美国在线注定失败之后的很长时间，该部门依旧赚取了数亿美元。

    显然，美国在线和彭博社有很大的不同，不过这个类比仍然很合适。数据业务是他们的生命线，也是其立身之本。如果这个倚靠不再像之前一样好使了，而那些新业务还没有找到自立之道，迈克尔建立的这家公司会有怎样的下场呢？（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正

    审校：任文科

    At Bloomberg, the Businessweek unit and the TV operation collectively lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year, all subsidized by the terminals. According to Politico, Michael Bloomberg’s approach to all of this is a kind of corporate Darwinism, in which he pits individual staff or groups against each other in order to see which one will emerge victorious.

    “Many employees describe Mike Bloomberg’s management style as putting ‘cats in a bag’ to see which will emerge alive. In a December 2013 Fortune article, the metaphor called for ‘five cats in a bag.’ In a story this year in the New York Post, it was ‘six cats.’ One source suggested to Politico Magazine that the number of cats is irrelevant. The point is not for a cat to emerge. The point is for Mike Bloomberg to have cats in a bag. Until they are all dead. ‘Then he just gets a new bag of cats,’ the source said.”

    At least for now, Bloomberg’s data business generates such huge amounts of money that it can afford to take its time figuring out what a largely free-to-consumer web strategy might look like, or how it is going to transition its customer base from one to the other. In that sense, the terminal business is a little like AOL’s dial-up unit, which continued to spin off hundreds of millions of dollars long after it became obvious that the open web had won and AOL was doomed.

    There’s obviously a universe of difference between AOL and Bloomberg, but the analogy still mostly fits. The data business is a lifeline, but it’s also a crutch. What happens to the company that Mike built when the crutch stops working as well as it has in the past, but those new businesses still haven’t figured out how to survive on their own?