疯狂的钻石
真正的企业家能变废为宝，化腐朽为神奇
2013 年7 月24 日
创业是当代哲学家的宝石，它是一种神秘的东西，被视为隐藏着推动经济增长并创造就业机会的秘密。20国集团(G20)每年都举行一次青年领袖峰会。130多个国家和地区共同庆祝全球创业周(Global Entrepreneurship Week)。商业学校推出了如何成为一名企业家的课程，并深受欢迎。商业领袖们提出了（往往是相互矛盾的）创业指南：大卫·冈柏特(David Gumpert)出版了两本这样的书，《如何真正制作一份成功的商业计划书》(How to Really Create a Successful Business Plan)和《烧掉你的商业计划书！》(Burn Your Business Plan!)。
但究竟什么是创业（撇开那种对”企业”一词的长串解释）？政府应该如何宣扬创业呢？政策制定者和商业领袖们感到同样困惑。他们认为这一定意味着新技术，所以他们试图创立新的硅谷。或者说，这与小企业有关，所以他们注重扶持初创企业。这两个假设都会令人产生误解。
硅谷无疑是近几十年来以技术为基础的创业大本营。不过，要成为一个企业家，你并不需要成为一个极客。德克萨斯州的石油商乔治·米切尔(George Mitchell)率先发明了水力压裂技术，如同硅谷人那样改变了世界。你也不需要成为传统产业的创新者。米格尔·达维拉(Miguel Dávila)和同事们将美国的复合电影院引入墨西哥，从而建立了一个庞大的企业。达维拉说，他们唯一的创新”是把爆米花的调味料换了，用柠檬汁和辣椒番茄酱代替黄油。”
张楚格同样地，典型的小型企业家（其梦想是再开一家分店）和真正的企业家（其梦想改变整个行业）之间
存在着天壤之别。吉姆·麦肯(Jim McCann)是1-800-FLOWERS.COM网站的创始人，他是一个真正的企业家，而不仅仅是一个花商，这是因为正如他所说，当他于1976年开设第一家花店时，他是”用麦当劳的眼光”审视这个行业的。经过多年的打拼，他建立了世界上最大的花卉运送公司。
这些误解影响深远，因为它们催生出糟糕的政策。这个世界充斥着发展陷入困境的高科技园地。马来西亚生物谷被戏称为”生物鬼谷”。这个世界还充斥着未能提供大量就业机会的小企业。考夫曼基金会(Kauffman Foundation)对此展开研究，结果表明大量的就业机会来自极少数快速发展的企业。
丹尼尔·艾森伯格(Daniel Isenberg)是一名（有时比较失败的）企业家和风险资本家，也是一名学者【他曾任教于哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)，现任教于附近的巴布森学院(Babson College)】，他专注研究创业领域已经有三十年了。他还周游世界，搜集案例，与硅谷的巨头一样，他对冰岛的仿制药产业很感兴趣。在新书《毫无价值、不可能的、愚蠢至极》(Worthless, Impossible, and Stupid)中，他重新定义了创业。从本质上讲，企业家是逆势的价值创造者。他们看到的经济价值，在别人看来一文不值。他们看到的商机，在别人看来只是死路一条。
生来彷徨歌词
有很多显著的例子可以证明这一点：莫·易卜拉欣是塞尔特公司(Celtel)的创始人，当电信巨头们只看到撒哈拉以南非洲地区的贫穷农民和后勤困境时，他看到了将手机引入该地区的可能性。在前往多巴哥岛的旅途中，肖恩·迪民(Sean Dimin)和他的父亲迈克尔(Michael)注意到渔民任由成吨的鱼腐烂，于
是他们创立了一家名为Sea to Table 的公司，将多余的鱼运送到纽约的餐馆。作为哈佛商学院的一名学生，威尔·迪安(Will Dean)注意到社交媒体正掀起极限活动的风尚。于是，他成立了一个名为Tough Mudder的公司，人们付费后就可体验痛苦和屈辱。
泪蛋蛋掉在酒杯杯里马美如艾森伯格强调，逆向成功还需要具备藐视传统智慧的自信（迪安的教授们认为他疯了），以及克服障碍的决心（迪民父子花费了两年的时间，才使得渔民改变他们的习惯）。事实上，优秀企业家的特别之处在于他们达成不可能目标的能力，而不是思维的独创性。TCS本质上是一个巴基斯坦版的联邦快递(FedEx)。但为了公司发展，哈立德·阿万(Khalid Awan)克服了”不可逾越”的难题，比如与控制着运输行业的团伙达成协议，讨好那些动辄就可关闭一家新公司的政客们。
为了赚钱
对于真正想推动创业的政策制定者来说，艾森伯格有两条重要建议。首先，他们应该消除所有企业的准入和发展门槛，而不是建立特定类型的企业。其次，他们应该认识到的利润动机的重要性。虽然已经有太多关于”社会创业”的溢美之词，例如促使企业做慈善，但企业家的真正动力来自赚钱。这是驱使人们冒着巨大风险，并忍受数年艰难困苦的原因。这也是鼓励投资者将赌注压在看似疯狂的经营理念上的原因。
政治家和官僚们不仅将创业与他们青睐的技术和小企业混为一谈，他们还没有认识到，创业活动也会
令他们感到紧张。企业家的兴旺以社会失衡为代价，他们在美国创造了巨额财富，从而导致这个国家不平等加剧。他们也靠破坏起家，在造就成功者的同时也造就了失败者。约瑟夫·熊彼得(Joseph Schumpeter)曾经认为，经济进步发生在”破坏”和”飞跃”之时，而不是在”无穷尽的小进步”中，因为这是由打破常规的企业家推动起来的。我们固然可以想象在没有许多”熊彼得破坏”发生的情况下获得经济发展和创造就业机会。但是，有些想法真的是毫无价值、不可能的，也愚蠢至极。
英文原文：
ist/news/business/21581695-city-leaders-are-increasingly-adopting-business-methods-and-promoting-business-mayors-and-mammon
what is dancing mvSchumpeter
Mayors and mammon原创歌曲
City leaders are increasingly adopting business methods and promoting business
Jul 13th 2013 |From the print edition
THE mayor of New York pays homage to business in almost everything he does. His office is modelled on the “bullpen” of a trading floor. His administration uses business methods to improve everything from city services (for example, providing 24-hour public helplines) to long-term planning. He sees New York as a corporation, city workers as talent, and the public as customers—and by and large New Yorkers love him for it.
Michael Bloomberg is a successful businessman as well as a popular mayor. But he is hardly alone in regarding himself as the CEO of his city. A growing number of mayors see their job as promoting business-friendly environments and selling their cities abroad. The mayor of Houston, Annise Parker, boasts about providing a “concierge service” for companies. The mayor of San Francisco, Ed Lee, has established a Tech Chamber of Commerce to complement the traditional chamber. The mayor of Portland, Sam Adams, has a plan to double the city’s exports. A former mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, says his biggest regret over his time in office is that he did not spend more time promoting his city in Latin America and Asia.
Why are mayors playing such a prominent role in business these days? In a new book, “The Metropolitan Revolution”, Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley explain that the growing paralysis in Washington, DC, with the Republicans and Democrats locked in an ideological death-struggle, is forcing mayors to step in to solve practical problems. Mr Bloomberg argues that cities are being forced to “tackle our economic problems largely on our own. Local elected officials are responsible for doing, not debating. For innovating, not arguing. For pragmatism, not partisanship.”
Mayors have certainly assumed an important role in America as Washington has imploded. But the metropolitan revolution is global. Mayors the world over now spend their time issuing urban prospect
味道歌词uses and flying off to gatherings of businesspeople. Your columnist recently came across the mayor of Tel Aviv, Ron Huldai, in St Petersburg promoting, among other things, the virtues of his city’s hospitals. In China mayors do not have much to do other than woo businesses and promote the local economy. True, like other local politicians, mayors employ armies of public-
relations flacks to big up their contribution to local business growth, but increasingly there is substance behind the hype.
Cities are becoming more important to the fate of the global economy. The proportion of the world’s population that lives in them has grown from 3% in 1800 to 14% in 1900 to more than 50% today. It could reach 75% in 2050: in the developing world more than 1m people move to cities every five days. Cities have always made a disproportionate contribution to growth. Parag Khanna of the New America Foundation, a think-tank, calculates that 40 city-regions produce two-thirds of the world’s economic output and an even higher share of its innovations. Gerald Carlino of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia notes that the denser the city, the more inventive: the number of patents per head rises by an average of 20-30% for each doubling of the number of employed people per square kilometre. This outsize contribution will surely grow as economies become more knowledge-based.
Businesses are also rediscovering the attraction of cities after a prolonged fling with the suburbs and out-of-town office parks. Twitter has chosen to stay in San Francisco even as it has grown into an internet Leviathan. Google has chosen to open offices at King’s Cross in London, and Chelsea Market in Manhattan, rather than in the cheaper suburbs. Zappos, an online shoe-shop, has moved its 2,000 workers from the Las Vegas suburbs to the city’s old town hall in what passes for downtown.
This suggests a growing confidence that businesses can call the tune. Mayors can no longer rely on expanding their own payrolls to provide jobs in the way that they could in the era of “municipal socialism”. And businesses can use their power of exit to get the best deals from cities: Mr Lee offered Twitter generous tax breaks to persuade it to stay in the city. Consultancies such as McKinsey and outfits such as the Economist Intelligence Unit (a sister organisation of The Economist) produce rankings of the most business-friendly cities to help them make a choice.
The bicycle path to ruin
There are plenty of problems with the new fashion. Competition between mayors to appease businesses can become costly. China’s Pearl River Delta region now has no fewer than five internati
onal airports, causing havoc with air-traffic control. Mayors can become slaves of fashion: almost everybody these days seems to be building loft apartments and bicycle paths in an effort to attract “knowledge workers”. It would also be a mistake to imagine that the high costs, crime, congestion and other problems that drove companies to abandon cities in the late 20th century have disappeared. There is nothing to stop voters dumping a pro-business mayor in favour of an old-style, business-bashing populist. Urban protest groups can discombobulate business districts, as the Occupy movement did in New York and as the demonstrators in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro risk doing.
But the new trend is nevertheless welcome. Companies are bringing life back to urban areas that were dead or dangerous. And city governments are abandoning some of their worst habits in the name of efficiency and customer focus. In 1892 Joseph Chamberlain, a retired mayor of Birmingham in England, likened the government of cities to a “joint stock or co-operative enterprise in which every citizen is a shareholder, and of which the dividends are receivable in the improved health and the increase in the comfort and happiness of the community.” That is a pretty good description-cum-prospectus for what is going on in the best-run cities today.
From the print edition: Business