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A special report on entrepreneurship
关于创业精神的特别报道

Global heroes
全球英雄

Mar 12th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Despite the downturn, entrepreneurs are enjoying a renaissance the world over, says Adrian Wooldridge
尽管经济依然下滑，在全球范围内创业者正在进入全面复兴时期，Adrian Wooldridge如是说



IN DECEMBER last year, three weeks after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and in the midst of the worst global recession since the 1930s, 1,700 bright-eyed Indians gathered in a hotel in Bangalore for a conference on entrepreneurship. They mobbed business heroes such as Azim Premji, who transformed Wipro from a vegetable-oil company into a software giant, and Nandan Nilekani, one of the founders of Infosys, another software giant. They also engaged in a frenzy of networking. The conference was so popular that the organisers had to erect a huge tent to take the overflow. The aspiring entrepreneurs did not just want to strike it rich; they wanted to play their part in forging a new India. Speaker after speaker praised entrepreneurship as a powerful force for doing good as well as doing well.

去年十二月，也就是在孟买遭受恐怖袭击三周之后，世界仍处于1930年代以来最严重的经济衰退之中，1700名充满激情的印度年轻人齐聚班加罗尔一家酒店，来参加此处举行的一场关于创业的会议。许多商业英雄被他们团团围住，例如将Wipro从一家植物油公司转变成软件巨头的Azim Premji和另一家软件巨头Infosys的合伙创始人Nandan Nilekani。除了追捧那些商界巨子之外，他们也积极投入社交活动，以期扩充人脉网络。没料到这场会议如此受到欢迎，主办方不得不搭起巨大的帐篷来容纳多余的人群。充满抱负的创业者不仅仅只是为了发财而已，他们还想在建设新印度中占据一席之地。一位接着一位的演讲者都在赞美强调创业精神是将事业做起来和将事业做好的力量源泉。

Back in 1942 Joseph Schumpeter gave warning that the bureaucratisation of capitalism was killing the spirit of entrepreneurship. Instead of risking the turmoil of “creative destruction”, Keynesian economists, working hand in glove with big business and big government, claimed to be able to provide orderly prosperity. But perspectives have changed in the intervening decades, and Schumpeter’s entrepreneurs are once again roaming the globe.

早在1942年，Joseph Schumpeter就曾给出警告：官僚资本主义会扼杀创业精神。凯恩斯学派的经济学家们不去冒“创造性破坏”的混乱的风险，而去与“大生意”和“大政府”勾结，还声称这样可以产生有序繁荣。但是经过这几十年，观点已经变了，Schumpeter的创业者们再次风靡全球。

Since the Reagan-Thatcher revolution of the 1980s, governments of almost every ideological stripe have embraced entrepreneurship. The European Union, the United Nations and the World Bank have also become evangelists. Indeed, the trend is now so well established that it has become the object of satire. Listen to me, says the leading character in one of the best novels of 2008, Aravind Adiga’s “The White Tiger”, and “you will know everything there is to know about how entrepreneurship is born, nurtured, and developed in this, the glorious 21st century of man.”

自从1980年代里根－撒切尔革命之后，几乎所有意识形态的政府都开始笃信创业精神。而欧盟，联合国和世界银行也都成为创业精神的传教士。确实，现在这种理念已经完全地建立以致其成为讽刺的对象。2008年最佳小说之一Aravind Adiga的“The White Tiger”中的主人公说道：“听我说，在人类辉煌的21世纪，所有你要知道的就是创业精神是如何产生、培养和发展的。”

This special report will argue that the entrepreneurial idea has gone mainstream, supported by political leaders on the left as well as on the right, championed by powerful pressure groups, reinforced by a growing infrastructure of universities and venture capitalists and embodied by wildly popular business heroes such as Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson and India’s software kings. The report will also contend that entrepreneurialism needs to be rethought: in almost all instances it involves not creative destruction but creative creation.

这次特别报道认为：由于受到无论左派还是右派的政治领袖的支持，压力集团的捍卫，日益增长的大学基础设施和风险资本的强化，加上一些广受欢迎的商业英雄例如Oprah Winfrey，Richard Branson和那些印度的软件巨头的影响力，创业意识已经成为主流。这次特别报道同样认为创业主义需要被再思考：在几乎所有的例子里，它含有的不是创造性破坏，而是创造性创造。

The world’s greatest producer of entrepreneurs continues to be America. The lights may have gone out on Wall Street, but Silicon Valley continues to burn bright. High-flyers from around the world still flock to America’s universities and clamour to work for Google and Microsoft. And many of them then return home and spread the gospel.

世界最伟大的创业者制造国依然是美国。华尔街的火焰可能已经熄灭，但是硅谷还在继续发光。全世界抱负极高的人依然会蜂拥挤向美国的大学，而且要努力进入谷歌和微软工作。当然他们中许多人还是会返回故乡，并在那里传播创业精神的福音。

The company that arranged the oversubscribed conference in Bangalore, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), is an example of America’s pervasive influence abroad. TiE was founded in Silicon Valley in 1992 by a group of Indian transplants who wanted to promote entrepreneurship through mentoring, networking and education. Today the network has 12,000 members and operates in 53 cities in 12 countries, but it continues to be anchored in the Valley. Two of the leading lights at the meeting, Gururaj Deshpande and Suren Dutia, live, respectively, in Massachusetts and California. The star speaker, Wipro’s Mr Premji, was educated at Stanford; one of the most popular gurus, Raj Jaswa, is the president of TiE’s Silicon Valley chapter.

班加罗尔那次人潮涌动会议的组织者是Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE)公司，它正是美国无处不在的一个例子。TiE是由一群印度移民1992年在硅谷创办的一家公司，旨在通过引导、构建网络和教育来促进提升创业精神。今天这家公司的网络已经拥有12000名会员并且在12个国家53个城市运作，但是它的总部依然在硅谷。那次会议的两位重要人物：Gururaj Deshpande 和 Suren Dutia分别住在马萨诸塞州和加利福尼亚州。演讲嘉宾Wipro公司的 Premji先生曾在斯坦福大学接受过教育，最受欢迎的商业名星之一Raj Jaswa正是TiE公司硅谷分部的主席。

The globalisation of entrepreneurship is raising the competitive stakes for everyone, particularly in the rich world. Entrepreneurs can now come from almost anywhere, including once-closed economies such as India and China. And many of them can reach global markets from the day they open their doors, thanks to the falling cost of communications.

创业精神的全球化正在增加每个人的竞争筹码，特别是发达国家的人们。创业者可以来自几乎任何地方，包括曾经封闭的经济体例如印度和中国。多亏了通讯价格的下降，他们中的许多人都可从国家开放那天起触及全球市场。

For most people the term “entrepreneur” simply means anybody who starts a business, be it a corner shop or a high-tech start up. This special report will use the word in a narrower sense to mean somebody who offers an innovative solution to a (frequently unrecognised) problem. The defining characteristic of entrepreneurship, then, is not the size of the company but the act of innovation.

对于许多人来说，“entrepreneur”这个单词就是说开办一个企业的人，这个企业可能是街头的一间商店或者一家高科技公司。本次特别报道仅使用这个词的狭义含义：使用创新方法解决一个（通常不被认可）问题的人。创业精神的典型特征不是公司的大小，而是其创新的行为。

A disproportionate number of entrepreneurial companies are, indeed, small start-ups. The best way to break into a business is to offer new products or processes. But by no means all start-ups are innovative: most new corner shops do much the same as old corner shops. And not all entrepreneurial companies are either new or small. Google is constantly innovating despite being, in Silicon Valley terms, something of a long-beard.

非常多的创业公司是刚起步的小型公司。开办公司切入市场最好的方法就是提供新的产品和新的工艺技能。但并不是所有的刚起步的小型公司都是创业公司：许多新的街头小店提供与老的小店相同的服务。也并不是所有的创业公司都是新的或者小的。谷歌就是一家有着持久创新能力的，长寿（以硅谷的标准）的创业公司。

This narrower definition of entrepreneurship has an impressive intellectual pedigree going right back to Schumpeter. Peter Drucker, a distinguished management guru, defined the entrepreneur as somebody who “upsets and disorganises”. “Entrepreneurs innovate,” he said. “Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship.” William Baumol, one of the leading economists in this field, describes the entrepreneur as “the bold and imaginative deviator from established business patterns and practices”. Howard Stevenson, the man who did more than anybody else to champion the study of entrepreneurship at the Harvard Business School, defined entrepreneurship as “the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control”. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, arguably the world’s leading think-tank on entrepreneurship, makes a fundamental distinction between “replicative” and “innovative” entrepreneurship.

狭义上的创业精神定义有着鲜明的学术色彩，可以追溯到Schumpeter。著名的管理学巨头Peter Drucker将创业者定义为有着“不安分和破坏旧秩序”思想的人。他说：“创业者会革新。创新是创业者的特质。”此领域重要的经济学家之一William Baumol将创业者描述为：“大胆而充满想象力，偏离常规商业模式和商业实践而建立企业的人。”在哈佛商学院在捍卫创业精神的研究上比其它任何人做都多的Howard Stevenson将创业精神定义为：“追求超越你现有控制资源机会的精神” 被认为是世界上关于创业精神研究的重要智库Ewing Marion Kauffman基金会研究出“重复”和“创新”的一个显著区别。