评论
打印
The Frappuccino effect
星冰乐效应
How Starbucks branches caffeinate local economies.
星巴克分店如何为当地经济注入活力。
Starbucks offers endless opportunities for innovation. Parts of social media delight in hacking the chain’s menu to create highly instagrammable drinks.
星巴克提供了无尽的创新机会。社交媒体上的一些人喜欢破解星巴克的菜单，创造出非常适合发在Instagram上的饮品。
Fancy a “cake batter Frappuccino”? Simply order a “vanilla bean creme Frappuccino”, add a pump of hazelnut syrup and ask the barista to put a cake pop in the blender.
想来一杯“蛋糕糊星冰乐”吗？只需点一杯“香草豆奶油星冰乐”，加入一泵榛子糖浆，然后让咖啡师把一根棒棒糖蛋糕放入搅拌机中。
A new working paper suggests the purveyor of coffee-based milkshakes offers other innovation, too. Choi Jinkyong, Jorge Guzman and Mario Small, all of Columbia University, find that a new Starbucks in an American neighbourhood without a coffee shop leads to the creation of between 1.1 and 3.5 new companies a year over the next seven years.
一份新的工作论文表明，这家咖啡奶昔供应商也会带来其他创新。哥伦比亚大学的崔进勇（音译）、豪尔赫·古兹曼和马里奥·斯莫尔发现，在一个原本没有咖啡店的美国街区开一家新的星巴克，会在接下来的七年里每年催生1.1到3.5家新公司。
That, the authors argue, owes to the cafe’s role as a “third place”—somewhere people can gather without a purpose. Branches “help entrepreneurs form and mobilise networks”, they write.
作者们认为，这是因为星巴克咖啡馆是“第三空间”——人们可以无目的地聚集在这里。他们写道，星巴克分店“帮助创业者组建和调动人脉”。
Perhaps Starbucks spots neighbourhoods where the flat-white-sipping entrepreneurs of tomorrow will settle and boost business-creation numbers. To control for this, the authors lean on two sources of randomness: nimbyism and Earvin “Magic” Johnson, a basketball player.
也许星巴克能发现，那些喝着澳白咖啡的明日创业者会在哪个街区安定下来并提高该街区新增企业的数量。为了控制这一变量，论文作者们依赖两个随机因素来源：邻避效应和篮球运动员“魔术师”埃尔文·约翰逊。
They compare places that gained a Starbucks with those where the chain had hoped to expand only to be foiled by planning objections, ensuring it was not the chain’s foresight which explained the later business growth.
作者们将新增了星巴克门店的地方与星巴克曾希望新增门店但因规划方面的反对而受阻的地方进行了比较，以确保后来的企业增长不是因为星巴克的远见。
They also look at places that gained a branch following a partnership with Mr Johnson which aimed to push the chain into poor neighbourhoods, and were thus not its usual sort of site.
他们还关注了那些星巴克与约翰逊合作后而新增分店的地方，该合作旨在将星巴克推广到较贫困街区，因此这些地方并不是星巴克通常会选择的地点。
Although the paper is not yet peer-reviewed, it has historical plausibility. London’s coffee houses were the site of 18th-century innovation. They were known as “penny universities”: for the price of a cup one could gain access to the era’s finest minds.
虽然这篇工作论文尚未经过同行评审，但它具有历史合理性。伦敦的咖啡馆是18世纪进行创新的场所。这些咖啡馆被称为“一便士大学”：只需一杯咖啡的钱，人们就能接触到那个时代最优秀的思想。
Lloyd’s of London, an insurance market, is the descendant of Lloyd’s coffee house; London’s stock exchange has a similar pedigree.
保险交易所劳合社就是劳合咖啡馆的后裔，伦敦证券交易所也有类似的血统。
The results also provide a puzzle. Starbucks drew from Europe’s cafes. Yet the presence of third spaces across the continent has not been enough to overcome its innovation struggles.
这些结果也带来了一个谜题。星巴克借鉴的是欧洲咖啡馆模式。然而，遍布整个欧洲大陆的第三空间并不足以克服其创新困境。
Maybe there is something about the chain itself. Italians should trade their espresso for a “cotton candy Frappuccino” just in case.
也许原因在于星巴克本身。以防万一，意大利人应该把他们的浓缩咖啡换成“棉花糖星冰乐”。
