????在彭博社，《商業周刊》和電視部門加起來每年要損失數億美元，這些虧損都由數據終端部門來填補。據Politico報道稱，邁克爾?布隆伯格拿出的應對辦法是一種公司達爾文主義，他讓個人或團隊彼此競爭，來看看究竟誰能夠勝出。

????“許多員工把邁克爾?布隆伯格的管理風格稱作‘把貓放進袋子里’，看看哪只能活著爬出來。在2013年12月《財富》雜志的一篇文章中，有個比喻就是‘一個袋子里有五只貓’。而在今年《紐約郵報》的故事里，則有‘六只貓’。某消息源向Politico表示，有幾只貓并不重要。問題的關鍵不在于哪只貓能活著出來，而在于邁克爾?布隆伯格要把貓放進袋子。等這些貓都死掉以后，‘他就會再去弄一袋新貓，’消息源表示。”

????至少在目前階段，彭博社的數據業務還能產生大量收益，足以讓公司從容地構想大規模的免費網絡戰略，或是找出從一個用戶群過渡到另一個用戶群的方法。從這個意義上看，終端業務有點像美國在線的撥號上網部門，在開放網絡已經贏得勝利，美國在線注定失敗之后的很長時間，該部門依舊賺取了數億美元。

????顯然，美國在線和彭博社有很大的不同，不過這個類比仍然很合適。數據業務是他們的生命線，也是其立身之本。如果這個倚靠不再像之前一樣好使了，而那些新業務還沒有找到自立之道，邁克爾建立的這家公司會有怎樣的下場呢？（財富中文網）

????譯者：嚴匡正

????審校：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?