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经济学人：无可奈何花落去盖茨神话难再续

2008-07-01 09:59:45 / 个人分类：美国社会

Microsoft

The meaning of Bill Gates

Jun 26th 2008

From The Economist print edition

Landov

As his reign at Microsoft comes to an end, so does the era he dominated

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.当比尔·盖茨在33年前和合伙人一起创办微软时，他定了一条公司章程就是：如果老板的编写的计算机语言不如员工的话，任何员工都不得在他的领导下工作。仅仅5年以后，当微软遭遇发展瓶颈之时，盖茨雇用了一位管理者，

他就是Steve Ballmer，当时他刚刚在一家销售肥皂的Procter & Gamble公司崭露头脚。而微软的创始人盖茨也就将其制定的编程规则抛到了九霄云外。

本段词汇：cut one's teeth 长新牙的意思

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.从创立微软到成为世界首富，比尔·盖茨一路走来，其间我们即感受到他不可动摇的自信，也屡屡看到在自信与现实冲突时，现实主义总是占了上峰。但是在这个星期，当这位杰出的商界奇人决定从他毕生的事业中引退之时，他的这些品质第一次在公众场合表现出来。

本段词汇：punctuate被打断的意思

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.退休之后，盖茨将不再处理日常事务，但会担任董事会主席，他将致力于慈善事业，展开对虐疾和贫穷的斗争，而不是对谷歌和司法部的斗争。在人生的中年阶段选择这项困难重重的事业是盖茨自信的表现，但同时也是盖茨实用主义表现，也许还有一些无奈。盖茨对管理公司的日常事务曾经是那样的投入，那样的忘我，而彻底放手的决定实际上是承认了他对微软对精华、最具价值的贡献俱往矣，他现在必须接受任何创新者都如流星划过的事实。

MS DOS and don’ts

As with many great innovations, Mr Gate s’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.

盖茨的伟大创新众多，不过现在他的眼光所及也都是显而易见的发展趋势。然而，在此之前，他把握住了两件事情，这两件事情以当时的环境而论还是雾里看花，不甚明了的，他比他在Commodore, MITS 甚至是Apple的竞争者都看的准确，并且以比他们都义无反顾的精神去实现。

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.第一件事情是计算机会成为一项薄利多销的业务。在微软进入此行业之前，计算机领域的利润和业务主要集中在维护一些特定顾客的大型主机上面。但盖茨却认识到硬件成本下降，同时制作更多的标准软件的成本可以忽略不计，这就足以使个人电脑进入寻常百姓家。利润来自于薄利多销，而不是为少数人高价服务。在起跑线上赢得大市场份额的公司将会在日后遥遥领先。

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 busin ess 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.

盖茨也认识到将硬件制造和软件编程结合起来会取得一加一大于二的效应。当像APPLE这样的公司还在坚持发展计算机操作系统和硬件之时，当时很多主机公司都是这样的业务模式，微软和INTEL公司，他们当时致力于设计个人电脑的程序处理器就将计算机的这两个业务分开了。这样，硬件和软件公司就只能在微软的windows和intel共同打造的wintel垄断模式的生态环境中创新了，尽管有大大小小的毛病，wintel还是获得了大量的利润。当强大的IBM决定允许微软将其电脑操作系统出售给其它硬件公司时，IBM没有预料到他正在为自己树立一个强劲的竞争对手，但是这一切都在盖茨的预料之中。

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.可以业界对微软总是有点酸溜溜的不屑，他们认为微软不过是在模仿跟进别人的技术成果。确实，微软公司不止一次的购买或者模仿了其他人的技术成果。第一个个人电脑的操作系统就是以其他人的程序为基础的。但是盖茨的发明是作为一个商人的发明。他的过人之处就在于他清楚地知道自己需要什么，并且知道如何去实现，不论需要多少时间。在电脑业界，那些自认为有远见卓识的人都喜欢对别人的想法创意不屑一顾，他们轻易的将目光投向别处，而这最终证明既是优势，更是导致失败的诱因。

And look at what happened when M r 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.现在我们再来看一下盖茨的实用主义，他的实用主义既成就他的事业，也背叛了他的事业。在微软公司里，员工们都害怕盖茨，害怕他无休无止的点子，害怕他面面俱到的管理，害怕他对那些他认为愚笨的员工的零容忍态度。不过，美国的法律体系丝毫不管这些。在微软被认为是阻碍竞争时，盖茨在法庭作证，这段影像资料中，我们看到了一个盛气凌人、脾气暴躁的盖茨，他坐在椅子时，不时地摇晃一下，显得目中无人，好像被大众惯坏了。其实正是我们赋予他的智慧的桂冠使他敢于让整个世界屈服于他，这段影像资料也是一段对此十分难得的记录。在微软的发展历程中，微软也经历过需要盖茨服从世界大势才能继续生存的为数不多的时候，每一次盖茨都表现出他的实用主义的一面。但是在反垄断的问题上，盖茨说不了。当时的媒体则认为他的态度并没有导致公司的分裂是他的幸运。

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 descrīption 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.时代造就盖茨和喜怒无常是盖茨这个创新者的两个重要标志。第三个标志就是所有时代先锋都必须面对的转瞬即逝。这是哈佛商学院的Clayton Christensen所作的精彩评论。一个管理完备的公司，拥有无懈可击的技术，在服务于它们最忠实的顾客之时，却因为一个更便宜，更粗糙却可推广至大众的替代技术，而不得不停下它的脚步。这就是微软的office，现在他所囊括的比任何人希望的都多得多，即

使现在谷歌和其它的后来者也在网上提供基本的免费的文字处理软件和电子制表软件。

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. Mr Christensen一针见血的评价也是盖茨挥之不去的困扰，他甚至要求Mr Christensen提供帮助力挽狂澜。微软成功地将WINDOWS打造成服务器的操作系统；微软也试图进入电脑游戏和移动通信等新的领域；微软也曾经在各种研究项目上一掷千金－尽管没有秀出成果。尽管微软付出了努力，尽管盖茨孜孜以求，但微软最后的定位仍然只是网络终端。微软想要在网络上证实自己的实力仍是路慢慢。看到微软在谷歌和facebook的天地中打拼，就仿佛看到自己的父亲竭力扮酷一样。

Business is good for you

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. 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.盖茨可以说生逢其

时。不过在以合作和信息支离破碎的网络时代盖茨还是显得措手不及。但这他所取得的成就并不因此显得暗淡失色，而他致力于慈善事业的决定也不能够为他的成就增姿添彩。不论这位这位商界社会责任巨头说什么，商业自有自己永恒的规律：商业对社会最大的贡献就应该是盈利和生产产品。慈善现在既不能使好人显得神圣，也不会为坏人洗脱罪名。盖茨纵有许多缺点，仍是瑕不掩瑜。一些伟大的工业巨头如福特在世界大势向前，影响力式微之时，仍是欲走还留。盖茨坚持实用主义到最后，功成身退。