WHEN Bill Gates helped to found Microsoft 33 years ago there was a company rule that no employees should work for a boss who wrote worse computer code than they did. Just five years later, with Microsoft choking on its own growth, Mr Gates hired a business manager, Steve Ballmer, who had cut his teeth at Procter & Gamble, which sells soap. The founder had chucked his coding rule out of the window.
當(dāng)33年前比爾蓋茨協(xié)助創(chuàng)立微軟時(shí)，公司有條規(guī)定”員工不應(yīng)該為編程能力比自己差的老板工作。”僅僅5年之后，為了應(yīng)對(duì)微軟飛速發(fā)展產(chǎn)生的瓶頸，蓋茨先生雇傭了商務(wù)經(jīng)理史蒂夫?鮑爾默。后者只曾在日用化學(xué)品公司寶潔初試身手。這位創(chuàng)始人便這樣把他的編程規(guī)則拋到了九霄云外。
In becoming the world’s richest man, Mr Gates’s unswerving self-belief has repeatedly been punctuated by that sort of pragmatism. But those qualities have never been on such public display as they were this week, when the outstanding businessman of his age stepped back from a life’s work.
成為世界上最富有的人的路上，蓋茨先生一貫的自信多次讓位于那種實(shí)用主義哲學(xué)。但那些品質(zhì)從未如本周一樣在公眾面前展示得如此淋漓盡致-一個(gè)年紀(jì)并不大的成功商人甘愿主動(dòng)離開費(fèi)盡一生心血的事業(yè)。
As Microsoft’s non-executive chairman, Mr Gates will devote most of his efforts to his charitable foundation, where he will pit himself against malaria and poverty, rather than Google and the Department of Justice. To choose such formidable new foes in the middle of your life takes bags of self-belief, but it is also pragmatic-and a little poignant. Mr Gates has revelled in the day-to-day details of running his firm. To let it all go is to acknowledge that his best work at Microsoft is behind him. It is to accept that the innovator’s curse is to be transitory.
蓋茨先生退位成為微軟非執(zhí)行主席后，將更多致力于其名下的慈善基金上。他的對(duì)手不再是谷歌和司法部，而是瘧疾和貧窮。但這也是一種實(shí)用主義-盡管有些傷感。日復(fù)一日，蓋茨先生已經(jīng)沉醉于管理公司的點(diǎn)點(diǎn)滴滴。唯有承認(rèn)自己在微軟的黃金時(shí)代已經(jīng)過去，唯有接受革新終難持久的詛咒，方能拋卻這一切。
MS DOS and don’ts
有所為有所不為
As with many great innovations, Mr Gates’s vision has come to seem so obvious that it is hard to imagine the world any other way. Yet, early on, he grasped two things that were far from obvious at the time, and he grasped them more clearly and pursued them more fiercely than his rivals did at Commodore, MITS or even Apple.
蓋茨先生有很多偉大的革新，其夢想已經(jīng)成為現(xiàn)實(shí)，很難想象沒有他的創(chuàng)舉世界會(huì)如何。很早以前，他就牢牢把握了現(xiàn)在看來天經(jīng)地義的兩個(gè)理念，并且堅(jiān)定不移的推行，比他的對(duì)手Commodore MITS甚至蘋果公司更加努力執(zhí)著。
The first was that computing could be a high-volume, low-margin business. Until Microsoft came along, the big money was in maintaining a select family of very grand mainframes. Mr Gates realised that falling hardware costs, combined with the negligible expense of making extra copies of standard software, would turn the computer business on its head. Personal computers could be “on every desk and in every home”. Profit would come from selling a lot of them cheaply, not servicing a few at a great price. And the company that won a large market share at the start would prevail later on.
第一個(gè)理念是計(jì)算機(jī)行業(yè)可以做到薄利多銷。在微軟入行前，資金都投入在維護(hù)一系列大型主機(jī)上。蓋茨先生意識(shí)到降低硬件花銷加上幾乎可忽略的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)軟件復(fù)件費(fèi)用，可以讓計(jì)算機(jī)行業(yè)發(fā)生翻天覆地的變化。個(gè)人電腦可以出現(xiàn)在”每個(gè)家庭的每張桌子上?！崩麧檨碜缘蛢r(jià)高銷量，而不是高價(jià)低銷量。最先在開始階段贏得大量市場份額者將在以后的競爭中獲得極大優(yōu)勢。
Mr Gates also realised that making hardware and writing software could be stronger as separate businesses. Even as firms like Apple clung on to both the computer operating system and the hardware-just as mainframe companies had-Microsoft and Intel, which designed the PC’s microprocessors, blew computing’s business model apart. Hardware and software companies innovated in an ecosystem that the Wintel duopoly tightly controlled and-in spite of the bugs and crashes-used to reap vast economies of scale and profits. When mighty IBM unwittingly granted Microsoft the right to sell its PC operating system to other hardware firms, it did not see that it was creating legions of rivals for itself. Mr Gates did.
蓋茨先生還意識(shí)到把硬件生產(chǎn)和軟件開發(fā)分做兩個(gè)行業(yè)效果更好。當(dāng)時(shí)大型機(jī)公司哪怕是蘋果都同時(shí)進(jìn)行操作系統(tǒng)和硬件的開發(fā)。微軟和個(gè)人電腦微處理器制造公司英特爾打破了這一模式。兩者軟硬分修，和諧共進(jìn)，共同創(chuàng)立了革命性的戰(zhàn)略同盟。盡管缺乏穩(wěn)定性并且小錯(cuò)不斷，但掠取了大筆市場份額和利潤。當(dāng)藍(lán)色巨人IBM公司不經(jīng)意中允許微軟把自己開發(fā)的操作系統(tǒng)賣給其他硬件公司，并沒有意識(shí)到正為自己大量樹敵。比爾先生成功了。
The technology industry likes to sneer at Microsoft as a follower. And it is true that the company has time and again bought in or imitated the technology of others. That very first PC operating system was based on someone else’s code. But Mr Gates’s invention was as a businessman. His genius was to understand what he needed and work out how to obtain it, however long it took. In an industry in which visionaries are often sniffy about anyone else’s ideas, the readiness to go elsewhere proved a devastating advantage.
行內(nèi)人士總嘲笑微軟就像跟屁蟲，它也確實(shí)一再別人那里模仿或買入技術(shù)。其首個(gè)個(gè)人電腦操作系統(tǒng)就是基于他人的代碼。但蓋茨先生在商業(yè)方面有了更多的創(chuàng)舉。他的天才之處在于理解自己所需并找出獲取的方法，不管要等多久也要弄到手。在一個(gè)到處是眼高手低對(duì)別人觀點(diǎn)嗤之以鼻人士的行業(yè)中，隨時(shí)做好轉(zhuǎn)變的準(zhǔn)備是一種引人注目的優(yōu)勢。
And look at what happened when Mr Gates’s pragmatism failed him. Within Microsoft, they feared Bill for his relentless intellect, his grasp of detail and his brutal intolerance of anyone whom he thought “dumb”. But the legal system doesn’t do fear, and in a filmed deposition, when Microsoft was had up for being anti-competitive, the hectoring, irascible Mr Gates, rocking slightly in his chair, came across as spoilt and arrogant. It was a rare public airing of the sense of brainy entitlement that emboldened Mr Gates to get the world to yield to his will. On those rare occasions when Microsoft’s fortunes depended upon Mr Gates yielding to the world instead, the pragmatic circuit-breaker would kick in. In the antitrust case it did not, and, as this newspaper argued at the time (see article), he was lucky that it did not lead to the break-up of his company.
然后再看看實(shí)用主義如何妨礙蓋茨先生進(jìn)一步成功。他很難聽取別人意見，對(duì)細(xì)節(jié)斤斤計(jì)較，完全不能容忍他稱之為”笨蛋”的人，這讓微軟的人無不憂心。但司法系統(tǒng)可不吃這一套。當(dāng)微軟陷入反壟斷調(diào)查時(shí)流出的一段影像中，蓋茨先生危言恐嚇脾氣暴躁，他坐在椅子中微微發(fā)抖，顯得驕慢自大。這段影片難得的向公眾展示了蓋茨先生自我感覺天賦異稟想要世界屈從他意志的一面。當(dāng)微軟的財(cái)富都取決與蓋茨先生是否會(huì)向世界低頭時(shí)，他就會(huì)切換到實(shí)用主義的一面。但在反壟斷一案中并未如此。本報(bào)當(dāng)時(shí)就認(rèn)為，此事沒讓其公司分崩離析是他的幸運(yùn)。
Inevitability and temperament are two hallmarks of Gates the innovator. The third is the transience of all pioneers. The argument was brilliantly laid out by Clayton Christensen, of Harvard Business School. The perfecting of a technology by a well managed company catering to its best customers leaves it vulnerable to “disruption” by a cheaper, scrappier alternative that is good enough for everyone else. That could be a description of Microsoft’s Office, which now does more than almost anybody could wish for-even as Google and others are offering free basic word-processors and spreadsheets online.
勢不可當(dāng)與魅力四射是蓋茨作為革新者的兩大標(biāo)志，第三個(gè)就是同所有開拓者一樣-好景不長了。哈佛商業(yè)學(xué)院的Clayton Christensen對(duì)此有極其高明的論斷。不斷完善管理和技術(shù)以滿足高端用戶需求的公司其一貫方針很容易被打斷，最終選擇生產(chǎn)價(jià)格便宜，質(zhì)量剛夠滿足大眾需求的產(chǎn)品。微軟的Office系列收費(fèi)軟件正是如此，它現(xiàn)在的功能強(qiáng)大到幾乎超出所有人的預(yù)想，可Google和其他公司卻提供了僅有基本功能卻完全免費(fèi)的在線文字處理和電子表格軟件。
Mr Gates was haunted by Mr Christensen’s insight-he even asked for his help to keep back the tide. Microsoft successfully extended Windows as an operating system for servers; it has moved into new areas, such as mobile devices and video games; and it has lavished billions of dollars on all sorts of research-without much to show for it. Despite all those efforts, the PC, Mr Gates’s obsession, has ended up as an internet terminal. The company still has everything to prove online (see article). Watching Microsoft in the company of Google and Facebook is a bit like watching your dad trying to be cool.
蓋茨先生正陷入了Christensen所描述的情形中。他甚至向后者請(qǐng)教過如何阻止這一潮流。微軟成功的把Windows操作系統(tǒng)拓展到服務(wù)器上。并且不斷涉足新的領(lǐng)域，比如移動(dòng)設(shè)備和視頻游戲。在各個(gè)領(lǐng)域的研究上一擲千金-哪怕成果并不明朗。盡管所有這些努力，蓋茨先生一直所執(zhí)著的個(gè)人電腦已經(jīng)成為網(wǎng)絡(luò)終端。在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)各個(gè)方面，他的公司依然需要努力證明自己。看著微軟同谷歌和Facebook這些互聯(lián)網(wǎng)時(shí)代新貴較勁就有點(diǎn)像看你老爸努力裝酷的樣子。
Business is good for you
商場是你的天地
Mr Gates had the good fortune to be perfectly suited for his time-but he is less well-equipped for the collaborative and fragmented era of internet computing. This does not diminish his achievement. Nor, as some would have it, does his philanthropy necessarily magnify it. Whatever the corporate-social-responsibility gurus say, business is a force for good in itself: its most useful contribution to society is making profits and products.
在他的時(shí)代，蓋茨先生好運(yùn)不斷。然而他還難以勝任合作分散的網(wǎng)絡(luò)計(jì)算時(shí)代，盡管這并不會(huì)使他的成就縮水。同時(shí)他的慈善事業(yè)也不會(huì)如一些人認(rèn)為的那樣必定為他錦上添花。不管這位身負(fù)公司和社會(huì)責(zé)任的巨頭如何說，商業(yè)的力量永遠(yuǎn)在于其本身，它對(duì)社會(huì)最有用的貢獻(xiàn)就是生成利潤和產(chǎn)品。
philanthropy no more canonises the good businessman than it exculpates the bad. In spite of his flaws, Mr Gates is one of the good kind. Some great industrialists, like Henry Ford, stick around even as the world moves on and their powers fail. Mr Gates, pragmatic to the end, is leaving at the top.
慈善更多是為壞商人開脫，而非為好商人歌功頌德。瑕不掩瑜，蓋茨先生還算好的那類。一些行業(yè)泰斗，比如亨利.福特，在時(shí)代變遷，風(fēng)光不再時(shí)依然抱殘守缺。蓋茨先生最終選擇實(shí)用主義，激流勇退。
