轉貼： The United States of Entrepreneurs創業家合眾國

有小部分翻譯明顯錯誤
我已經修改過了
.......................................................................................

The United States of Entrepreneurs創業家合眾國[2009.03.12]

The Economist《經濟學人》中文版
http://www.ecocn.org/wordpress/?p=772
三月 31, 2009



America still leads the world
美國仍然引領世界

FOR all its current economic woes, America remains a beacon of entrepreneurialism. Between 1996 and 2004 it created an average of 550,000 small businesses every month. Many of those small businesses rapidly grow big. The world’s largest company, Wal-Mart, was founded in 1962 and did not go public until a decade later; multi-million dollar companies such as Google and Facebook barely existed a decade ago.
儘管有目前的經濟危機，美國依舊是創業精神的領航者。1996至2004年間，該國月均有55萬個小公司成立，其中很多成長迅速。當世最大的公司—沃爾瑪成立於1962年，自成立後近十年才上市。而諸如穀歌和FACEBOOK這種資產數百萬美元的公司十年前才剛見雛形。
America was the first country, in the late 1970s, to ditch managerial capitalism for the entrepreneurial variety. After the second world war J.K. Galbraith was still convinced that the modern corporation had replaced “the entrepreneur as the directing force of the enterprise with management”. Big business and big labour worked with big government to deliver predictable economic growth. But as that growth turned into stagflation, an army of innovators, particularly in the computer and finance industries, exposed the shortcomings of the old industrial corporation and launched a wave of entrepreneurship.
70年代後期，美國是拋棄管理資本主義而採用創業多樣化的第一個國家。第二次世界大戰後，J.K. Galbraith仍然堅信現代企業已經取代了“企業家作為企業管理的控制力”。大公司和大量勞動力與大政府配合產生了可預見的經濟增長。但當這種增長變 成了滯漲時，改革群體，特別是電腦和金融業的革新者們揭示了那些老舊工業企業的缺陷並掀起了創業的新浪潮。
America has found the transition to a more entrepreneurial economy easier than its competitors because entrepreneurialism is so deeply rooted in its history. It was founded and then settled by innovators and risk-takers who were willing to sacrifice old certainties for new opportunities. American schoolchildren are raised on stories about inventors such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison. Entrepreneurs such as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford are celebrated in monuments all over the place. One of the country’s most popular television programmes, currently being recycled as a film, features the USS Enterprise boldly going where no man had gone before.
美國人發現，較競爭對手而言，他們更易過渡到創業型經濟，原因是因為創業精神如此深深紮根於美國的歷史之中。這種理念為那些願意為新機會而打破陳規 舊矩的創新者和冒險者們所挖掘並吸收。伴隨美國學童成長的是本傑明•佛蘭克林 和湯瑪斯•愛迪生這類發明家的故事。人們四處為安德魯•卡耐基和亨利•福特這樣的企業家樹碑褒揚。近期美國最受歡迎之一的電視節目被翻拍成電影，描寫了美 國企業號航母勇於探索那些人類未知之地。
If anything, America’s infatuation with entrepreneurialism has deepened further of late. People like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have all the upsides of Carnegie and Ford without the downsides—the useful products and the open-handed philanthropy without the sweatshops and the massacres. Preachers style themselves as pastorpreneurs. Business books sell in their millions. “When I was in college, guys usually pretended they were in a band,” comments one observer. “Now they pretend they are in a start-up.”
如果有什麼區別的話，那就是近期美國對創業精神的醉心程度大大加深。諸如比爾•蓋茨、史蒂夫•約伯斯等人與卡耐基、福特等人成就不相上下，而並無前 人的不足——有用的產品和慷慨的慈善事業，卻沒有血汗工廠與專橫的裁員。“傳教士將自己塑造為精神先知”。關於商業的書籍銷量數以百萬，一位書評人說：“ 當我上大學的時候，大家一般都自稱自己是樂隊成員，而現在他們自稱在創業”。


Advantage America
有優勢的美國
American companies have an unusual freedom to hire and fire workers, and American citizens have an unusual belief that, for all their recent travails, their fate still lies in their own hands. They are comfortable with the risk-taking that is at the heart of entrepreneurialism. The rewards for success can be huge—Google’s Mr Brin was a billionaire by the time he was 30—and the punishments for failure are often trivial. In some countries bankruptcy spells social death. In America, particularly in Silicon Valley, it is a badge of honour.
在雇傭和解雇員工上，美國公司有不同尋常的自由，美國民眾也有著不同尋常的信念：儘管辛苦，他們的命運仍掌握在他們自己手中，他們對創業精神核心的 “冒險性”習以為常。成功的回報是巨大的—GOOGLE的創始人之一Brin在30歲時已成為億萬富翁，而失敗的懲罰則往往微不足道。在一些國家，破產意 味著社會性死亡，而在美國，特別是在矽谷，失敗則是榮耀的勳章。

America also has several structural advantages when it comes to entrepreneurship. The first is the world’s most mature venture-capital industry. America’s first venture fund, the American Research and Development Corporation, was founded in 1946; today the industry has an unrivalled mixture of resources, expertise and customers. Highland Capital Partners receives about 10,000 plausible business plans a year, conducts about 1,000 meetings followed by 400 company visits and ends up making 10-20 investments a year, all of which are guaranteed to receive an enormous amount of time and expertise. IHS Global Insight, a consultancy, calculates that in 2005 companies that were once backed by venture capitalists accounted for nearly 17% of America’s GDP and 9% of private-sector employment.
當提到創業的時候，美國還具有一些結構性優勢。首先是具有世界最成熟的創業資本產業，美國的第一支創業基金：美國研究與開發公司成立於1946年。 至今該行業已經擁有資源、技術和客戶的完美組合。高原資本每年接受1萬個左右的合理化商業計畫書，召集大概1000次會議，有400家公司參加並最終確定 10-20個投資專案，所有這些都被保證能夠負擔大量的時間和技術。顧問公司IHS Global Insight計算出2005全年曾有過創業資本支持的項目總額接近美國GDP總量的17%，從業人員占私營經濟總人數的9%。
The second advantage is a tradition of close relations between universities and industry. America’s universities are economic engines rather than ivory towers, with proliferating science parks, technology offices, business incubators and venture funds. Stanford University gained around $200m in stock when Google went public. It is so keen on promoting entrepreneurship that it has created a monopoly-like game to teach its professors how to become entrepreneurs. About half of the start-ups in the Valley have their roots in the university.
第二個優勢在於大學與產業密切聯繫的傳統。在激增的科學院所、技術中心、企業孵化器、創業基金的助推下，美國大學更是經濟的發動機，而不是象牙塔。 谷歌上市時，斯坦福大學在股市中賺取了2億美元。該大學熱衷發揚創業精神，甚至創造了一種“大富翁遊戲”來教育自己的教授們如何成為企業家。矽谷大概有一半的創業都可以從大學追根溯源。
The third advantage is an immigration policy that, historically, has been fairly open. Vivek Wadhwa, of Duke University, notes that 52% of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants, up from around a quarter ten years ago. In all, a quarter of America’s science and technology start-ups, generating $52 billion and employing 450,000 people, have had somebody born abroad as either their CEO or their chief technology officer. In 2006 foreign nationals were named as inventors or co-inventors in a quarter of American patent applications, up from 7.6% in 1998.
第三個優勢是從歷史來看，美國有相當開放的移民政策。杜克大學的Vivek Wadhwa指出在矽谷52%的創業專案由移民創建，而10年前該數字僅有大概25%。那些由非美國本土出生人員擔任總裁或首席技術官的科學和技術創業項 目占到總數的25%，提供了520億美元的產出和45萬個就業機會。與1998年的7.6%相比，2006年有25%的專利申請授予外國國民發明人或合夥發明人稱號。
Amar Bhidé, of Columbia University, suggests a fourth reason for America’s entrepreneurial success—“venturesome consumers”. Americans are unusually willing to try new products of all sorts, even if it means teaching themselves new skills and eating into their savings; they are also unusually willing to pester manufacturers to improve their products. Apple sold half a million iPhones in its first weekend.
哥倫比亞大學的Amar Bhidé提出美國創業精神成功的第四個原因是“敢於冒險的客戶”。美國人超乎尋常地樂於嘗試所有的新產品，即使他們需要重新自學新的技能（才能操作新產品）及需要耗費自己儲蓄資金（來使用新產品）。，他們還樂於不厭其煩地促使生產商改進產品。蘋果公司在Iphone上市的第一周就銷售了50萬個。
America faces numerous threats to this remarkable entrepreneurial ecology. The legal system can be burdensome, even destructive. One of the biggest new problems comes from “patent trolls”—lawyers who bring cases against companies for violating this or that trumped-up patent. Because the tax system is so complicated, many companies have to devote a lot of time and ingenuity to filling out tax forms that could be better spent on doing business. And the combination of the terrorist attacks on America on September 11th 2001 and rising xenophobia is making the country less open to immigrants.
美國卓越的創業生態面臨著眾多的威脅：法律系統成為了累贅，甚至具有破壞性。最大的新問題之一來自於“專利釣餌者”—這行律師專事起訴那些侵犯了某項“虛設專利”的公司；由於稅收系統的複雜，許多公司必須投入本應用於公司業務的大量時間和技巧來填報納稅申報表格。再加上911事件與仇外情緒上漲的綜合影響，使得美國對移民的開放度下降。
Today more than 1m people are waiting in line to be granted legal status as permanent residents. Yet only 85,000 visas a year are allocated to the sort of skilled workers the economy needs, and there are caps of 10,000 on the number of visas available for applicants from any one country, so the wait for people from countries with the largest populations, such as India and China, is close to six years.

目前，超過100萬人正在排隊等候獲得合法的永久居住權，然而每年只有8.5萬個簽證被分配給那些經濟發展所需要的技術人員。同時，接受來自同一國家的簽證申請人數上限僅為1萬人。也就是說，那些來自於人口最多的國家，如印度和中國的申請人需要等待將近6年的時間。
Yet despite these problems, America plays a vital role in spreading the culture of entrepreneurialism around the world. People the world over admire its ability to produce world-changing entrepreneurs, such as Bill Gates, wealth-creating universities, such as Harvard and Stanford, and world-beating clusters, such as Silicon Valley. Simon Cook, of DFJ Esprit, a venture-capital company, argues that Silicon Valley’s most successful export is not Google or Apple but the idea of Silicon Valley itself.
然而，儘管存在這些問題，在向全世界推廣創業精神文化中，美國仍扮演著至關重要的角色。人們都欽佩該國有能力培養足以改變世界的企業家，如比爾•蓋 茨；創造財富的大學，如哈佛和斯坦福，以及震撼全球的族群，如矽谷。DFJ Esprit創業資本公司的西蒙•庫克說：“矽谷最成功之處並不是產生了穀歌或蘋果，而是矽谷精神本身”。

Foreigners who were educated in America’s great universities have helped to spread the gospel of entrepreneurialism. Two of Europe’s leading evangelists, Sir Ronald Cohen and Bert Twaalfhoven, were both products of HBS. Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs, who cut their teeth in Stanford and Silicon Valley, are now returning home in ever larger numbers, determined to recreate Silicon Valley’s magic in Bangalore or Shanghai.
在美國頂尖大學接受教育的外國人們也在幫助傳播創業精神的福音。在歐洲推廣創業精神的兩大領軍人物：羅奈爾得•科恩爵士和Bert Twaalfhoven均出自與哈佛大學商學院。剛從斯坦福和矽谷走出的中國和印度的創業者人數與日俱增，他們正回到自己的家鄉，在班加羅爾或上海這樣的 地方續寫矽谷神話。
America is putting hard financial muscle behind this soft power. The Kauffman Foundation spends about $90m a year, from assets of about $2.1 billion, to make the case for entrepreneurialism, supporting academic research, training would-be entrepreneurs and sponsoring “Global Entrepreneurship Week”, which last year involved 75 countries. Goldman Sachs is spending $100m over the next five years to promote entrepreneurialism among women in the developing world, particularly through management education.
美國在這種軟權力的支持下正在恢復金融實力。資產總額21億美元的考夫曼基金會每年拿出9000萬美元資助創業精神推廣，包括支持學術研究、培訓想成為創業家的人們、贊助“全球創業周”活動（該活動去年有75個國家參與）。高盛在未來5年內將投入1億美元，特別是通過管理教育，提升那些發展中國家女 性的創業意識。


Old Europe
老舊的歐洲
The other two of the world’s three biggest developed economies—the EU and Japan—are far less entrepreneurial. The number of innovative entrepreneurs in Germany, for instance, is less than half that in America, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), a joint venture between the London Business School and Babson College. And far fewer start-ups in those countries become big businesses. Janez Potocnik, the EU commissioner for science and research, points out that only 5% of European companies created from scratch since 1980 have made it into the list of the 1,000 biggest EU companies by market capitalisation. The equivalent figure for America is 22%.
同為全球三大發達經濟體的歐洲和日本的創業精神則遠遠不如美國。根據英國倫敦商學院和美國百森商學院聯合共同發起成立的全球創業觀察（GEM）的數 據顯示，以德國為例，該國的創新型創業數量不及美國的50%，同時這些歐洲國家新創業公司成為大型企業的可能性則少之又少。歐盟負責科學與研究的委員 Janez Potocnik指出，按市值排名，1980年後白手起家的公司中，只有5%能排入歐洲前1000位，而這個比例在美國則是22%。
This reflects different cultural attitudes. Europeans have less to gain from taking business risks, thanks to higher tax rates, and more to lose, thanks to more punitive attitudes to bankruptcy (German law, for example, prevents anyone who has ever been bankrupt from becoming a CEO). When Denis Payre was thinking about leaving a safe job in Oracle to start a company in the late 1980s, his French friends gave him ten reasons to stay put whereas his American friends gave him ten reasons to get on his bike. In January last year Mr Payre’s start-up, Business Objects, was sold to Germany’s SAP for euro 4.8 billion.
這反映了不同的文化取向，由於較高的稅率，歐洲企業通過商業冒險而得到的收益較少，同時由於對破產嚴格的法律懲處，損失更多（例如德國法律規定有過破產記錄的人不得再擔任企業的總裁）。當上世紀80年代後期Denis Payre考慮辭去甲骨文公司安穩的工作崗位並創建一家新公司時，他的法國朋友給了他十條留下來的理由，而美國朋友則正相反，給了他同樣數量去創業的理由。去年1月份，Payre創立的商業目標公司被德國SAP公司以48億歐元的高價收購。
European egalitarianism, too, militates against entrepreneurialism: the EU is much more interested in promoting small businesses in general than in fostering high-growth companies. The Europeans’ appetite for time off does not help. Workers are guaranteed a minimum of four weeks’ holidays a year whereas Americans’ vacations are much less certain. Europeans are also much more suspicious of business. According to a Eurobarometer poll, 42% of them think that entrepreneurs exploit other people’s work, compared with 26% of Americans.
歐洲的平均主義也妨礙了創業精神的傳播：歐盟更樂於廣泛地發展小型企業，而不是鼓勵高成長企業。歐洲人對帶薪假期的熱望毫無益處。員工每年都能確保 享受4周的假期，而美國則少很多。歐洲人對企業持有更高的懷疑態度，根據歐洲指標的測評，42%的歐洲人認為企業家們剝削他人的工作成果，而僅有26%的 美國人這麼認為。
These cultural problems are reinforced by structural ones. The European market remains much more fragmented than the American one: entrepreneurs have to grapple with a patchwork of legal codes and an expensive and time-consuming patent system. In many countries the tax system and the labour laws discourage companies from growing above a certain size. A depressing number of European universities remain suspicious of industry, subsisting on declining state subsidies but still unwilling to embrace the private sector.
這些文化性問題由於結構性難題更加突出。歐洲市場較美國市場而言更加分散；創業者們需要服從各種法律規範；專利申請更加耗時費錢。在很多國家稅收系 統和勞工法案限制公司的成長規模。歐洲的大多數大學仍然對商業持懷疑態度，它們依靠持續減少的國家經費維持運行，而並不願意接受私營企業的捐助。
The European venture-capital industry, too, is less developed than the American one (significantly, in many countries it is called “risk” capital rather than “venture” capital). In 2005, for example, European venture capitalists invested euro 12.7 billion in Europe whereas American venture capitalists invested euro 17.4 billion in America. America has at least 50 times as many “angel” investors as Europe, thanks to the taxman’s greater forbearance.
歐洲的創業資本行業也不如美國發達（尤為重要的是，在很多國家被稱為“風險”資本而不是“創業”資本）。舉例說明，2005年歐洲創業投資額為127億歐元，而美國則達到了174億歐元。感謝那些納稅人更好的忍耐能力，美國的“天使”投資人數量是歐洲的至少50倍。
Yet for all its structural and cultural problems, Europe has started to change, not least because America’s venture capitalists have recently started to export their model. In the 1990s Silicon Valley’s moneybags believed that they should invest “no further than 20 miles from their offices”, but lately the Valley’s finest have been establishing offices in Asia and Europe. This is partly because they recognise that technological breakthroughs are being made in many more places, but partly also because they believe that applying American methods to new economies can start a torrent of entrepreneurial creativity.
儘管有這些結構性和文化性問題，歐洲已經開始轉變，尤其是當美國創業資本投資人近期開始輸出這種模式。上世紀90年代矽谷的富人們認為他們的投資“ 不能超出辦公室20英里的範圍“，而近來最好的公司已經開始在亞洲和歐洲設立機構。這種做法部分源於他們意識到在更多的地方可以實現技術突破，部分由於這 些公司相信在新興經濟中應用美國方法可以產生創業創新的浪潮。

Between 2003 and 2006 European venture-capital investment grew by an average of 23% a year, compared with just 0.3% a year in America. Indeed, three European countries, Denmark, Sweden and Britain, have bigger venture-capital industries, in relation to the size of their economies, than America. Venture-capital-backed start-ups have produced more than 100 “exits” (stockmarket flotations or sales to established companies) worth more than $100m since 2004. Tele Atlas, a Dutch mapping outfit, was recently bought by TomTom for $4.3 billion.
在2003至2006年間，歐洲創業資本投資以年均23%的速度增長，而美國則只有年均0.3%的增量。誠然，與美國相比，三個歐洲國家：丹麥、瑞 典和英國的創業資本行業占經濟規模的比重較大。自2004年起，創業資本資助的專案發生了100多次“重組”（對公司通過股市或進行直接收購），涉及資金 超過1億美元。德國地圖設備商Tele Atlas近期被TomTom以43億美元收購。
The success of Skype, which pioneered internet-based telephone calls, was a striking example of the new European entrepreneurialism. The company was started by a Swede and a Dane who contracted out much of their work to computer programmers in Estonia. In 2005 they sold it to eBay for $2.6 billion.
互聯網通話的領軍公司Skype的成功為新歐洲創業精神樹立了一個驚人的典範。這家公司最初由一個瑞典人和一個丹麥人發起設立，他們把許多工作外包給愛沙尼亞的電腦程式員。2005年，公司以26億美元的價格賣給eBay。
Several European universities have become high-tech hubs. Britain’s Cambridge, for example, has spawned more than 3,000 companies and created more than 200 millionaires in the university. The accession of ten eastern European countries to the EU has also tapped into an internal European supply of scientists and technologists who are willing to work for a small fraction of the cost of their pampered western neighbours.
一些歐洲大學也變成了高科技集中地。例如英國的劍橋孕育出3000多家公司，為大學創造了200多個百萬富翁。新加入歐盟的10個東歐國家也加強了歐洲內部的科學家和技術人員的供給量。這些人樂意以更低的成本為那些較富裕的西歐鄰居們工作。


Slowcoach Japan
行動遲緩的日本
The Japanese can hardly be accused of aversion to long hours. Big Japanese companies have an impressive record of incremental improvement, particularly in the electronics business. But for the most part the Japanese have been less successful than the Europeans at adapting to entrepreneurial capitalism. The latest GEM global report gives Japan the lowest score for entrepreneurship of any big country, placing it joint bottom with Greece. The brightest people want to work for large companies, with which the big banks work hand in glove, or for the government. Risk capital is rare. Bankruptcy is severely punished. And the small-business sector is wrapped in cotton wool, encouraging “replicative” rather than “innovative” behaviour. Over the past quarter-century the rate at which Japan has been creating new businesses has been only one-third to half that in America.
長期以來，日本人幾乎從不讓人反感。大型日本公司保持了驚人的增長記錄，特別是在電子行業尤為突出。但在很大程度上，日本在引入創業精神上沒有歐洲 人成功。最新的GEM全球報告在對所有大國的創業精神評價中，給予了日本最低分數，這使日本和希臘兩國共同墊底。在日本，最聰明的人希望為政府或大公司工作，那些大公司與大銀行關係緊密。在這裏基本沒有風險資本，而破產會受到嚴厲的懲罰。小型企業則被被束手束腳，它們鼓勵“複製”而非“創新”。在過去的四分之一個世紀中，日本所創建的新公司比例僅占美國的三分之一到二分之一。
譯者/chirsivy: http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=17951&extra=page%3D1
評論暫缺 »