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

The United States of Entrepreneurs
创业家合众国

Mar 12th 2009
From The Economist print edition

America still leads the world
美国仍然引领世界

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.

尽管有目前的经济危机，美国依旧是创业精神的领航者。1996至2004年间，该国月均有55万个小公司成立，其中很多成长迅速。当世最大的公司—沃尔玛成立于1962年，自成立后近十年才上市。而诸如谷歌和FACEBOOK这种资产数百万美元的公司十年前才刚见雏形。

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年代后期，美国是抛弃管理资本主义而采用创业多样化的第一个国家。第二次世界大战后，J.K. Galbraith仍然坚信现代企业已经取代了“企业家作为企业管理的控制力”。大公司和大量劳动力与大政府配合产生了可预见的经济增长。但当这种增长变成了滞涨时，改革群体，特别是计算机和金融业的革新者们揭示了那些老旧工业企业的缺陷并掀起了创业的新浪潮。

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.

美国人发现，较竞争对手而言，他们更易过渡到创业型经济，原因是因为创业精神如此深深扎根于美国的历史之中。这种理念为那些愿意为新机会而打破陈规旧矩的创新者和冒险者们所挖掘并吸收。伴随美国学童成长的是本杰明•富兰克林和托马斯•爱迪生这类发明家的故事。人们四处为安德鲁•卡耐基和亨利•福特这样的企业家树碑褒扬。近期美国最受欢迎之一的电视节目被翻拍成电影，描写了美国企业号航母勇于探索那些人类未知之地。

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.”

如果有什么区别的话，那就是近期美国对创业精神的醉心程度大大加深。诸如比尔•盖茨、史蒂夫•乔布斯等人与卡耐基、福特等人成就不相上下，而并无前人的不足——有用的产品和慷慨的慈善事业，却没有血汗工厂与专横的裁员。“传教士将自己塑造为精神先知”。关于商业的书籍销量数以百万，一位书评人说：“ 当我上大学的时候，大家一般都自称自己是乐队成员，而现在他们自称在创业”。

Advantage America
有优势的美国

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.

在雇佣和解雇员工上，美国公司有不同寻常的自由，美国民众也有着不同寻常的信念：尽管辛苦，他们的命运仍掌握在他们自己手中，他们对创业精神核心的 “冒险性”习以为常。成功的回报是巨大的—GOOGLE的创始人之一Brin在30岁时已成为亿万富翁，而失败的惩罚则往往微不足道。在一些国家，破产意味着社会性死亡，而在美国，特别是在硅谷，失败则是荣耀的勋章。

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.

当提到创业的时候，美国还具有一些结构性优势。首先是具有世界最成熟的创业资本产业，美国的第一支创业基金：美国研究与开发公司成立于1946年。至今该行业已经拥有资源、技术和客户的完美组合。高原资本每年接受1万个左右的合理化商业计划书，召集大概1000次会议，有400家公司参加并最终确定 10-20个投资项目，所有这些都被保证能够负担大量的时间和技术。顾问公司IHS Global Insight计算出2005全年曾有过创业资本支持的项目总额接近美国GDP总量的17%，从业人员占私营经济总人数的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.

第二个优势在于大学与产业密切联系的传统。在激增的科学院所、技术中心、企业孵化器、创业基金的助推下，美国大学更是经济的发动机，而不是象牙塔。谷歌上市时，斯坦福大学在股市中赚取了2亿美元。该大学热衷发扬创业精神，甚至创造了一种“强手棋”来教育自己的教授们如何成为企业家。硅谷大概有一半的创业都可以从大学追根溯源。

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.

第三个优势是从历史来看，美国有相当开放的移民政策。杜克大学的Vivek Wadhwa指出在硅谷52%的创业项目由移民创建，而10年前该数字仅有大概25%。那些由非美国本土出生人员担任总裁或首席技术官的科学和技术创业项目占到总数的25%，提供了520亿美元的产出和45万个就业机会。与1998年的7.6%相比，2006年有25%的专利申请授予外国国民发明人或合伙发明人称号。

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.

哥伦比亚大学的Amar Bhidé提出美国创业精神成功的第四个原因是“敢于冒险的客户”。美国人超乎寻常地乐于尝试所有的新产品，即使他们需要重新自学新的技能（才能操作新产品）及需要耗费自己储蓄资金（来使用新产品）。，他们还乐于不厌其烦地促使生产商改进产品。苹果公司在Iphone上市的第一周就销售了50万个。

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.

美国卓越的创业生态面临着众多的威胁：法律系统成为了累赘，甚至具有破坏性。最大的新问题之一来自于“专利钓饵者”—这行律师专事起诉那些侵犯了某项“虚设专利”的公司；由于税收系统的复杂，许多公司必须投入本应用于公司业务的大量时间和技巧来填报纳税申报表格。再加上911事件与仇外情绪上涨的综合影响，使得美国对移民的开放度下降。

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，超过100万人正在排队等候获得合法的永久居住权，然而每年只有8.5万个签证被分配给那些经济发展所需要的技术人员。同时，接受来自同一国家的签证申请人数上限仅为1万人。也就是说，那些来自于人口最多的国家，如印度和中国的申请人需要等待将近6年的时间。

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，尽管存在这些问题，在向全世界推广创业精神文化中，美国仍扮演着至关重要的角色。人们都钦佩该国有能力培养足以改变世界的企业家，如比尔•盖茨；创造财富的大学，如哈佛和斯坦福，以及震撼全球的族群，如硅谷。DFJ Esprit创业资本公司的西蒙•库克说：“硅谷最成功之处并不是产生了谷歌或苹果，而是硅谷精神本身”。

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.

在美国顶尖大学接受教育的外国人们也在帮助传播创业精神的福音。在欧洲推广创业精神的两大领军人物：罗纳德•科恩爵士和Bert Twaalfhoven均出自与哈佛大学商学院。刚从斯坦福和硅谷走出的中国和印度的创业者人数与日俱增，他们正回到自己的家乡，在班加罗尔或上海这样的地方续写硅谷神话。

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.

美国在这种软动力的支持下正在恢复金融实力。资产总额21亿美元的考夫曼基金会每年拿出9000万美元资助创业精神推广，包括支持学术研究、培训想成为创业家的人们、赞助“全球创业周”活动（该活动去年有75个国家参与）。高盛在未来5年内将投入1亿美元，特别是通过管理教育，提升那些发展中国家女性的创业意识。

Old Europe
老旧的欧洲

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%.

同为全球三大发达经济体的欧洲和日本的创业精神则远远不如美国。根据英国伦敦商学院和美国百森商学院联合共同发起成立的全球创业观察（GEM）的数据显示，以德国为例，该国的创新型创业数量不及美国的50%，同时这些欧洲国家新创业公司成为大型企业的可能性则少之又少。欧盟负责科学与研究的委员 Janez Potocnik指出，按市值排名，1980年后白手起家的公司中，只有5%能排入欧洲前1000位，而这个比例在美国则是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.

这反映了不同的文化取向，由于较高的税率，欧洲企业通过商业冒险而得到的收益较少，同时由于对破产严格的法律惩处，损失更多（例如德国法律规定有过破产记录的人不得再担任企业的总裁）。当上世纪80年代后期Denis Payre考虑辞去甲骨文公司安稳的工作岗位并创建一家新公司时，他的法国朋友给了他十条留下来的理由，而美国朋友则正相反，给了他同样数量去创业的理由。去年1月份，Payre创立的商业目标公司被德国SAP公司以48亿欧元的高价收购。

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.

欧洲的平均主义也妨碍了创业精神的传播：欧盟更乐于广泛地发展小型企业，而不是鼓励高成长企业。欧洲人对带薪假期的热望毫无益处。员工每年都能确保享受4周的假期，而美国则少很多。欧洲人对企业持有更高的怀疑态度，根据欧洲指标的测评，42%的欧洲人认为企业家们剥削他人的工作成果，而仅有26%的美国人这么认为。

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.

这些文化性问题由于结构性难题更加突出。欧洲市场较美国市场而言更加分散；创业者们需要服从各种法律规范；专利申请更加耗时费钱。在很多国家税收系统和劳工法案限制公司的成长规模。欧洲的大多数大学仍然对商业持怀疑态度，它们依靠持续减少的国家经费维持运行，而并不愿意接受私营企业的捐助。

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.

欧洲的创业资本行业也不如美国发达（尤为重要的是，在很多国家被称为“风险”资本而不是“创业”资本）。举例说明，2005年欧洲创业投资额为127亿欧元，而美国则达到了174亿欧元。感谢那些纳税人更好的忍耐能力，美国的“天使”投资人数量是欧洲的至少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.

尽管有这些结构性和文化性问题，欧洲已经开始转变，尤其是当美国创业资本投资人近期开始输出这种模式。上世纪90年代硅谷的富人们认为他们的投资“ 不能超出办公室20英里的范围“，而近来最好的公司已经开始在亚洲和欧洲设立机构。这种做法部分源于他们意识到在更多的地方可以实现技术突破，部分由于这些公司相信在新兴经济中应用美国方法可以产生创业创新的浪潮。

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年间，欧洲创业资本投资以年均23%的速度增长，而美国则只有年均0.3%的增量。诚然，与美国相比，三个欧洲国家：丹麦、瑞典和英国的创业资本行业占经济规模的比重较大。自2004年起，创业资本资助的项目发生了100多次“重组”（对公司通过股市或进行直接收购），涉及资金超过1亿美元。德国地图设备商Tele Atlas近期被TomTom以43亿美元收购。

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.

互联网通话的领军公司Skype的成功为新欧洲创业精神树立了一个惊人的典范。这家公司最初由一个瑞典人和一个丹麦人发起设立，他们把许多工作外包给爱沙尼亚的计算机程序员。2005年，公司以26亿美元的价格卖给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.

一些欧洲大学也变成了高科技集中地。例如英国的剑桥孕育出3000多家公司，为大学创造了200多个百万富翁。新加入欧盟的10个东欧国家也加强了欧洲内部的科学家和技术人员的供给量。这些人乐意以更低的成本为那些较富裕的西欧邻居们工作。

Slowcoach Japan
行动迟缓的日本

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.

长期以来，日本人几乎从不让人反感。大型日本公司保持了惊人的增长记录，特别是在电子行业尤为突出。但在很大程度上，日本在引入创业精神上没有欧洲人成功。最新的GEM全球报告在对所有大国的创业精神评价中，给予了日本最低分数，这使日本和希腊两国共同垫底。在日本，最聪明的人希望为政府或大公司工作，那些大公司与大银行关系紧密。在这里基本没有风险资本，而破产会受到严厉的惩罚。小型企业则被被束手束脚，它们鼓励“复制”而非“创新”。在过去的四分之一个世纪中，日本所创建的新公司比例仅占美国的三分之一到二分之一。