有些企业不采纳跳出固有思维框架的陈腐建议，而是往往采取不同的策略：他们为框架重贴标签。Rather than adopting the hackneyed advice to think outside the box, companies often take a different tack: they relabel the box.

ADJ If you describe something such as a saying or an image as hackneyed, you think it is no longer likely to interest, amuse, or affect people because it has been used, seen, or heard many times before.

最常见的做法是宣告：曾经的汽车制造商、保险公司或银行现在是一家科技公司。The most common way of doing this used to be to declare that what was a carmaker, insurance company, or bank was now a technology company.

生产运动服装的安德玛(Under Armour)、制造汽车的捷豹路虎(Jaguar Land Rover)以及第一资本(Capital One)、高盛(Goldman Sachs)和摩根大通(JPMorgan Chase)等金融机构近年都做出了这样的声明。安德玛首席执行官凯文•普朗克(Kevin Plank)在2016年被要求解释为何要出席侧重于科技产品的国际消费电子展(CES)时表示：“要在未来生活的人，最好来（这里）。”Under Armour, which makes sportswear, Jaguar Land Rover, which makes vehicles, and financial institutions such as Capital One, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase have made such statements in recent years. “Anybody that’s going to live in the future better be [here],” said Under Armour’s chief executive Kevin Plank when asked to explain his presence at the tech-heavy（句型，未必用动词表示侧重） Consumer Electronics Show in 2016.

最近，摩根大通让这种抱负更进一步，表示将为刚入行的投资银行家和资产管理人员提供编码课程，希望他们能够“学会与我们的技术团队使用相同的语言，从而最终为我们的客户提供更好的工具和解决方案”。JPMorgan took this ambition a step further last week when it said it was giving new investment bankers and asset managers coding lessons, in the hope they would learn to “speak the same language as our technology teams, which ultimately drives better tools and solutions for our clients”.

V-T The desire or feeling that drives a person to do something, especially something extreme, is the desire or feeling that causes them to do it.【AND】N-COUNT A drive is a very strong need or desire in human beings that makes them act in particular ways.

我将会在另一个专栏讲述教授编码能否达到此类目标。但摩根大通和安德玛是否是科技公司是一个容易回答的问题：它们不是。Whether teaching coding will achieve such goals is a subject for another column. But whether JPMorgan and Under Armour are technology companies is an easy question to answer. They are not.

或者更确切地说，如果它们是科技公司，那也只是在所有公司都必须理解并投资于技术设备的意义上。Or rather, if they are, then only in the sense that all companies must understand and invest in technology.

总之，无处不在的技术使旧的分类变得毫无意义。If anything, the ubiquity of tech is rendering old categories meaningless.

N-UNCOUNT If you talk about the ubiquity of something, you mean that it seems to be everywhere.

V-T You can use render with an adjective that describes a particular state to say that someone or something is changed into that state. For example, if someone or something makes a thing harmless, you can say that they render it harmless.

非常偶然的一种情况是，一家公司真的被误解了，这往往是出于深刻的历史原因。在2010年卖掉其糖和糖浆业务之前，泰莱(Tate & Lyle)很难让分析师相信它实际上是一家高科技原料生产商。一位前首席执行官甚至亲自穿上由玉米面料制成的西装，以展示该集团基于科学的战略。Very occasionally, a company is genuinely misunderstood, often for deep historical reasons. Until it sold its sugar and syrup business in 2010, Tate & Lyle struggled to convince（句型，别老用persuade） analysts that it was in fact a high-tech ingredients producer. One former chief executive went so far as to（句型，别老even） sport a suit made from corn-based fabric, to show off the group’s science-based strategy.

N-COUNT Ingredients are the things that are used to make something, especially all the different foods you use when you are cooking a particular dish.

公司强调其技术优势还有一些现实的考虑。随着对先进技术的依赖性增加，所有人都在争抢相同的开发人员和程序员。传统公司必然会在就业市场上设法为自己“抹金”，以便与谷歌(Google)或Facebook等明显的科技巨头争夺人才。There are also a few practical reasons for companies to emphasise their tech strengths. As dependency on advanced technology increases, everyone competes for the same developers and programmers. Traditional companies are bound to（句型） search for a little more clout in the jobs market against obvious tech heavy-hitters such as Google or Facebook.

N-UNCOUNT A person or institution that has clout has influence and power.

然而，大多数情况下，佯装科技公司的原因并不是那么站得住脚。一些公司只是简单地盘算，该行业在股市上的魅力将会让他们自己的证券沾光。正如最近美国科技股波动所显示的那样，这远非稳赚不赔的单向押注。Mostly, though, the reasons for dressing in technology’s clothes（句型） are less edifying. Some companies simply calculate the sector’s stock market glamour will rub off on their own securities. As the recent volatility of US technology stocks has shown, this is far from a one-way bet.

edify V to improve the morality, intellect, etc, of, esp by instruction

rub off N a resulting effect on something else; consequences

在极端情况下，跻身于热门行业的竞逐可能导致荒谬的变形，比如上世纪90年代将单调乏味的制造商重新命名为时髦的网络公司，或者最近将茶叶制造商、生物技术公司、运动文胸制造商和其他公司转变为区块链的先驱公司。At its extreme, the hunt for a hot sector（词汇）can lead to such shape-shifting absurdities as the renaming of humdrum manufacturers as go-go（词汇） dotcoms in the 1990s or the more recent pivot of tea brewers, biotech companies, sports bra makers and others into pioneers of blockchain.

ADJ If you say that something is absurd, you are criticizing it because you think that it is ridiculous or that it does not make sense.

21世纪初期，一些公司为了应对日益响亮的股票期权奖酬反对声音，开始进行游说，希望被划分至科技行业，从而让它们的慷慨期权方案与硅谷相比看起来不那么怪异。据一位知情人士透露，一家传统工业公司甚至以自己有一个网站为由，主张它是一家科技公司。In the early 2000s, some companies fighting against growing opposition to stock option perks lobbied to be reassigned to the technology sector, in the hope their lavishgrants of options would look less outlandish when compared with Silicon Valley. According to an insider, one traditional industrial company even argued it was a technology company because it had a website.

N-COUNT Perks are special benefits that are given to people who have a particular job or belong to a particular group.

ADJ If you describe something as lavish, you mean that it is very elaborate and impressive and a lot of money has been spent on it. 【OR】ADJ If you say that spending, praise, or the use of something is lavish, you mean that someone spends a lot or that something is praised or used a lot.

ADJ If you describe something as outlandish, you disapprove of it or find it funny because you think it is very unusual, strange, or unreasonable.

这种竞逐往往以退却、重组和后悔结束。This sort of quest often ends in retreat, restructuring and regret.

一个更加稳健的战略手段是以收购方式进入该行业——传统银行收购金融科技明星公司就是例证。但是，一家公司如果只是试图伪装为科技公司，它至少不至于让一线员工和客户感到恼怒，或者更糟糕的是感到困惑。从常识来说，银行、汽车制造商和运动服的大多数用户想要存钱或借钱，购买可靠的汽车，或者买舒适的紧身裤。如果他们开始担心技术是怎么运作的，那就要么是出错了（银行请注意），要么是不知怎么地搞混了核心产品。A more solid strategic approach is to buy into （句型，未必出现名词的merge并购）the sector — witness legacy banks’ takeovers of fintech stars. But a company that merely tries to pass itself off as something it is not risks annoying, or worse, confusing, its front-line staff and customers. Common sense says most users of banks, carmakers and athletic wear want to save or borrow money, to buy a reliable car, or to find some comfortable leggings（词汇）. If they start to worry about how the technology works, it has either gone wrong ( banks, please note), or is somehow obscuring the core product.

“行业流动性”的趋势不太可能放缓。就连归类企业的框架也在被调整。标普道琼斯指数公司(S&P Dow Jones Indices)刚刚将多家股票（包括谷歌的母公司Alphabet和Facebook）从“信息技术”板块转到“通信服务”板块。The trend towards sector fluidity is unlikely to slow down. Even the boxes into which companies were once placed are being shuffled. S&P Dow Jones Indices has just moved multiple stocks, including Google’s parent Alphabet and Facebook, out of the “information technology” sector and into “communication services”.

V-T If you shuffle playing cards, you mix them up before you begin a game.

标普道琼斯指数委员会负责人大卫•布利策(David Blitzer)解释道：“我们开始考虑不同公司如何使用Facebook，答案是，‘他们通过它进行通信’。”“We started thinking how different companies use Facebook and the answer was: ‘They communicate through it’,” explains David Blitzer, who heads the S&P DJI index committee.

这对投资者的行业加权投资组合最为重要。但该行业如此广泛——它包括AT&T等电信集团、广告代理商和电脑游戏开发商——以至于在未来几年内有更多改变空间。This matters most for investors’ industry-weighted portfolios. But the sector is so broad — it embraces telecoms groups such as AT&T, advertising agencies and computer game makers — that it allows for even more change（空间不用译出） in years to come.

N-COUNT In finance, a portfolio is the combination of investments that a particular person or company owns.

如今，我们对着隐藏在我们的手机、汽车、银行、商店以及家用电器（词汇）中的技术讲话。而它们会用语音答复。These days, we talk to the technology hidden in our phones, our cars, our banks, our shops and our householdappliances. They talk back.

佯称是一家科技公司的做法过时了。任何要在未来生活的人，最好跻身于通信服务。Pretending to be a technology company is so yesterday.（句型） Anybody who’s going to live in the future better be in communication services.