如今，商品可以直接送貨上門，這令所有人都興奮不已。其實這種想法有點可笑，因為我記得在我小時候，我母親經常從Marshall Field’s訂購各種商品。這家超市曾經遍布芝加哥城區和郊區，但如今已經沒落。送貨上門并不是最近才發明的新創意，而是重新發現和改善了舊的創意。

在市中心騎自行車出行也是一種非常傳統的理念。智能手機的普及和大量資本的涌入，正在使這種有益于環境的出行方式迸發出新的生機。房地產巨頭Related Cos的子公司Motivate，在舊金山等多個美國城市經營有樁共享單車。作為它的客戶，我對其服務非常滿意。（Motivate的收入部分來自廣告；福特（Ford）是其灣區業務的贊助商；在紐約的共享單車上印有花旗集團（Citi）的名稱。）

一家新的競爭對手正在填補北美市場的空白，它就是由阿里巴巴投資的中國共享單車公司Ofo。在中國國內，Ofo與騰訊投資的摩拜單車（Mobike）競爭激烈。在這場代理人戰爭中，資本是武器，而數據則是戰利品。在美國，Ofo的擴張速度更快。據Uber元老、Ofo美國業務負責人克里斯·泰勒表示，Ofo目前已經進入超過12個美國城市，到新年之前將進軍100多個城市。在其進軍北美的第一個城市達拉斯，截至新年前夜，Ofo投放的共享單車數量將達到10,000輛。

周一，我在舊金山的Ofo美國總部與泰勒進行了會面。由于Motivate與舊金山市簽署了排他性合同，目前，Ofo尚未在該市開展業務。我使用“總部”這個詞經過了認真考慮： Ofo的辦公地目前位于一間WeWork辦公室內。WeWork本身也代表了對共享辦公空間這個傳統理念的再創新。我之前對WeWork有所了解，但實地到訪卻讓我有了一種新的感悟。一層巨大的辦公樓里精心規劃出了大小不一的工作空間。（這棟大樓有整整一層曾經都是時代公司（Time Inc.）使用多年的辦公室，如今時代公司即將搬離此處。）租戶付費使用會議室，賬單與租金一同結算。我們很難想象沒有達到一定規模的公司，未來還會不嫌麻煩地租賃商業地產。

最好的新創意是改進那些經受住考驗的傳統理念。這種創新才能帶來真正的商機。（財富中文網）

譯者：劉進龍/汪皓

Everyone is agog at the things that can be delivered directly to their home these days. That’s kind of funny, seeing as I remember when I was very small my mother regularly ordered numerous items from Marshall Field’s, the long-departed and wonderful department store in Chicago and its suburbs. Home delivery didn’t so much get invented recently as rediscovered—and improved.

Riding bikes around urban centers is an exceedingly old idea too. Smartphones and oodles of capital are reinventing that environmentally positive idea. Motivate, an offshoot of the real estate giant Related Cos., runs docking-station-based share bikes in a handful of U.S. cities, including San Francisco, where I’m a satisfied customer. (Motivate makes part of its money from advertising; Ford is the Bay Area sponsor; Citi slaps its name on bikes in New York.)

A new competitor is blanketing North America, Ofo, the Alibaba-backed (BABA, -1.25%)Chinese bike sharing company. Ofo is locked in a battle with Tencent-backed Mobike in China, a proxy war with capital as the weapon and data as the prize. In the U.S., Ofo is expanding far more rapidly. According to Uber veteran Chris Taylor, head of Ofo’s U.S. business, the company already is in more than 12 U.S. cities and will be in more than 100 by next year. Its first city, Dallas, will have 10,000 bikes by New Year’s Eve.

I met Taylor Monday in Ofo’s U.S. headquarters in San Francisco, where Ofo doesn’t operate yet, the result of an exclusive contract Motivate signed with the city. I use “headquarters” advisedly: Ofo currently is housed in a WeWork office, itself a reinvention of an old concept, shared office space. I’ve known about WeWork, but visiting one of its locations was an epiphany. Various-sized workspaces are carved elegantly out of a giant floor. (Time Inc., which will go away soon, had an entire floor in the very same building for many years.) Tenants pay for conference-room time with chits that come with their rent. It’s hard to imagine any company below a certain size going to the trouble of leasing commercial real estate again.

The best new ideas improve on tried and true old ideas. That’s a form of innovation with real commercial opportunity.