Software has a natural affinity with blitzscaling, because the marginal costs of serving any size market are virtually zero. The more that software becomes integral to all industries, the faster things will move. Throw in AI machine learning, and the loops get even faster. So we’re going to see more blitzscaling. Not just a little more, but a lot more.

　　软件天然和闪电扩张相关联，由于软件服务于任何大小的市场的边际成本几乎为零。软件越对任何行业适用，扩张速度就越快。加入AI机器学习，循环很更快。所以我们会看到更多的闪电扩张。不只是多一点点，而是多非常多。

　　HBR：How did you settle on the term “blitzscaling”?

　　你如何找到“blitzscaling”这个术语的？

　　It has some interesting associations. I have obvious hesitations about the World War II association with the term “blitzkrieg.” However, the intellectual parallels are so close that it is very informative. Before blitzkrieg emerged as a military tactic, armies didn’t advance beyond their supply lines, which limited their speed. The theory of the blitzkrieg was that if you carried only what you absolutely needed, you could move very, very fast, surprise your enemies, and win. Once you got halfway to your destination, you had to decide whether to turn back or to abandon the lines and go on. Once you made the decision to move forward, you were all in. You won big or lost big. Blitzscaling adopts a similar perspective. If a start-up determines that it needs to move very fast, it will take on far more risk than a company going through the normal, rational process of scaling up. This kind of speed is necessary for offensive and defensive reasons. Offensively, your business may require a certain scale to be valuable. LinkedIn wasn’t valuable until millions of people joined our network. Marketplaces like eBay must have both buyers and sellers at scale. Payment businesses like PayPal and e-commerce businesses like Amazon have low margins, so they require very high volumes. Defensively, you want to scale faster than your competitors because the first to reach customers may own them, and the advantages of scale may lead you to a winner-takes-most position. And in a global environment, you may not necessarily be aware of who your competition really is.

　　它有一些有趣的关联。我有些犹豫，因为很明显“闪电战”和“第二次世界大战”相关。但是，闪电战这个词非常形象，意思很接近。在闪电战作为一种军事手段出现之前，军队不会推进超出他们的供应线，这限制了他们的速度。闪电战的理论是，如果你只携带你的必需品，你可以非常快速地移动并且赢得胜利，让敌人为之惊讶。一旦你到达距离目的地一半的时候，你必须决定是否回头或继续前行。一旦你决定向前走，你就置身全部了。你要么大赢要么大输。闪电扩张采用类似的观点。如果一家初创公司确定需要移动的速度非常快，那么它的风险要高于进行正常扩张的公司大得多。这种速度对于进攻和防守都是必要的。进攻上讲，你的业务可能需要一定的规模才有价值。只有数百万人加入我们的网络，LinkedIn才有价值。像eBay这样的交易市场一定要有买卖双方的规模。像PayPal这样的支付业务和像亚马逊这样的电子商务利润率很低，所以他们需要很大的交易量。防守上讲，你希望比竞争对手更快地扩张，因为首先接触客户才有可能拥有他们，而规模的优势可能会导致你赢者通吃。在全球化的环境中，你可能并不一定了解竞争对手到底是谁。

　　HBR：Are there several dimensions to the idea of scale?

　　规模这个概念而言，它有几个不同的维度吗？

　　There are three kinds of scale. People naturally focus on two of them: growing your revenues and growing your customer base. And of course, if you don’t get those right, then nothing else matters. But very few businesses can succeed on those fronts without also scaling the organization. An organization’s size and its ability to execute determine whether it can capture customers and revenue.

　　有三种不同的规模。人们一般关注其中两个：增加你的收入和增加客户群。当然，如果你这两个没有搞对，那么其他的都不重要。但很少有企业可以在不扩张组织规模的情况下实现这两个方面。组织的规模和执行力决定公司是否能够获取客户和收入。