重溫安迪格羅夫的硅谷精神 The man who shaped the Silicon Valley state of mind

Silicon Valley is more a state of mind than a place. It is not a single valley — the hills around Palo Alto, Cupertino and Mountain View in northern California are not high enough to form one. Nor is its chief business now silicon, the base layer of semiconductors since the rise of companies such as Fairchild Semiconductor, Motorola, Texas Instruments and Intel.

與其說硅谷是一個地名，不如說它代表着一種精神。它並非一道單一的峽谷——在加利福尼亞州北部，矗立在帕羅奧圖(Palo Alto)、庫比蒂諾(Cupertino)和芒廷維尤(Mountain View)周圍的山丘並不具有構成峽谷的高度。自從飛兆半導體(Fairchild Semiconductor)、摩托羅拉(Motorola)、德州儀器(Texas Instruments)、英特爾(Intel)之類的公司崛起以來，硅谷如今的主要產業也不再依託於硅這種生產半導體的原材料。

Silicon Valley’s relentless reinvention is evident in the fact that two of its best-known companies are Google (now Alphabet) and Facebook. Neither is in silicon. Google was founded only in 1998 and Facebook is even younger. It was created on the other side of the country, in a Harvard dormitory, by Mark Zuckerberg and friends in 2004.

硅谷不懈創新的精神從以下事實中可見一斑：谷歌（Google，現爲Alphabet旗下子公司）和Facebook都已是硅谷最知名的公司。它們都不屬於硅行業。谷歌1998年才創立，而更爲“年輕”的Facebook，是2004年由馬克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)和其朋友們在位於美國另一端的哈佛大學的宿舍裏創立的。

One seminal moment in Silicon Valley history occurred in 1985, as Intel lingered in what Andy Grove — the first employee of its founders, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore — used to call “the valley of death”. Grove, who later became Intel’s chief executive and chairman, and who died this week aged 79, meant a period when a company has been outsmarted.

硅谷歷史上一個影響深遠的時刻出現在1985年，彼時英特爾徘徊在安迪•格羅夫(Andy Grove)——兩位創始人羅伯特•諾伊斯(Robert Noyce)和戈登•摩爾(Gordon Moore)手下的首席僱員——所稱的“死亡之谷”，他的意思是指一家公司被對手打敗的時期。格羅夫後來成爲英特爾的首席執行官和董事長，他於3月21日辭世，享年79歲。

“I looked out of the window at the Ferris wheel of the Great America amusement park revolving in the distance, then I turned back to Gordon [then the company’s chief executive] and I asked ‘If we got kicked out and the company brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?’” Grove wrote in Only the Paranoid Survive, his 1996 book about management.

“我望着窗外遠處大美洲主題公園裏旋轉着的摩天輪，轉向戈登（時任英特爾首席執行官）問‘如果我們下臺了，公司再任命一個新CEO，你覺得他會怎麼辦？’” 格羅夫在他1996年出版的有關管理的書《只有偏執狂才能生存》(Only the Paranoid Survive)中這樣寫道。

“Gordon answered without hesitation, ‘He would get us out of memories [memory chips, Intel’s founding business, which had become dominated by Japanese manufacturers].’ I stared at him, numb, then said, ‘Why shouldn’t you and I walk out the door, come back and do it ourselves?’”

“戈登不假思索地回答，‘他會放棄存儲器業務（存儲芯片是英特爾的立命之本，而當時市場卻已是日本廠商的天下）。’我呆呆地注視着他，然後說，‘那我們爲什麼不這麼做呢？’”

The title Only the Paranoid Survive gives a good indication as to the lesson Grove wanted to impart. Along with David Packard’s The HP Way, about the formation and philosophy of Hewlett-Packard, it has the ingredients of Silicon Valley’s management formula.

《只有偏執狂才能生存》書名本身即明白表達出格羅夫意欲傳達的信條。與戴維•帕卡德(David Packard)所著講述惠普公司立世哲學的《惠普之道》(The HP Way)一樣，這本書也蘊含着硅谷管理哲學的精髓。

HP pioneered the informal, participatory structure of Silicon Valley companies, while Intel embodied their fierce, relentless competitiveness. Grove popularised the idea of the “strategic inflection point,” a time in the life of a business “when its fundamentals are about to change.” Never relax, never stop evolving, because just around the corner someone is coming for you.

惠普在硅谷首創了寬鬆的、參與式的組織文化，而英特爾則代表着硅谷公司身上那種強烈、不懈的競爭意識。格羅夫使“戰略轉折點”的概念流行開來，這是指企業發展歷程中“其根基將要發生改變”的時點。正因咫尺之遙就有人對你虎視眈眈，企業唯有永不鬆懈、永不停下發展的步伐。

Yahoo, a founding company of the internet era, is now in the valley of death. Marissa Mayer, the chief executive brought in from Google to try to salvage it from a strategic mess, has not succeeded. Starboard, an activist hedge fund, called this week for its entire board of directors to be fired.

雅虎，一家成立於互聯網時代的公司，目前就處於死亡之谷。現任CEO瑪麗莎•梅耶爾(Marissa Mayer)爲谷歌前高管，她試圖化解雅虎的戰略窘境而未能成功。積極型對衝基金斯塔博德(Starboard Value)近日要求撤換雅虎整個董事會。

Facebook, conversely, is doing extremely well — it has 1.6bn monthly active users around the world, and its strength in online and mobile advertising brought in revenues of nearly $18bn last year. It occupies a position in social networking akin to Intel’s in microprocessors during the 1990s: clear domination. Facebook’s debt to HP is visible at its campus headquarters in Palo Alto on the outskirts of Stanford University. There is a Walt Disney-like boardwalk by its main building along which employees stroll in the sunshine, pick up ice cream and food from carts, then cycle to its building, designed by Frank Gehry, architect of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao.

相反，Facebook就幹得非常漂亮，其在全球有16億個月活躍用戶，憑藉在互聯網和移動客戶端上的廣告優勢，去年Facebook實現了接近180億美元的收入。在社交網絡領域，Facebook的地位相當於20世紀90年代微處理器領域的英特爾：絕對統治。Facebook位於帕羅奧圖斯坦福大學(Stanford University)外圍的園區總部，明顯借鑑了惠普。一條沃爾特•迪士尼(Walt Disney)風格的棧道經過主樓旁，員工們可以在棧道上散步曬太陽，從餐車上取冰淇淋和食品，再騎車去上班。其建築的設計者爲弗蘭克•蓋裏(Frank Gehry)，即畢爾巴鄂古根漢美術館(Museo Guggenheim Bilbao)的建築師。

But Mr Zuckerberg has also learnt from Grove. The Facebook founder was photographed last week beaming as he took a jog in Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City in Beijing, without the face mask needed to block the city’s hazardous air pollution. Later he met Liu Yunshan, China’s propaganda chief.

但扎克伯格也從格羅夫身上學到了一些東西。這位Facebook的創始人近日被拍到在北京故宮和天安門廣場慢跑，照片上扎克伯格微笑着，並未戴口罩，似乎對中國嚴重的霧霾不以爲然。隨後扎克伯格見到了中國共產黨中央政治局常委劉雲山。

His intention was clear: Facebook has many users but China has nearly 1.4bn citizens who cannot yet join because it is blocked. China also has a globally ambitious industry led by companies such as Alibaba, much like the Japanese companies that rose against Intel in the 1980s. Mr Zuckerberg will endure a lot — including learning Mandarin — to counter the threat.

他的意圖很明顯：Facebook已擁有衆多用戶，但由於在中國被屏蔽，14億中國民衆還未加入Facebook。中國同樣有一個擁有全球抱負的科技行業，領軍的是像阿里巴巴這樣的公司，它們有點像上世紀80年代崛起並與英特爾分庭抗禮的日本企業。要應對這樣的威脅，扎克伯格需要克服很多困難，包括學習中國的普通話。

It was very painful when Mr Moore and Grove changed course, pivoting to focus on microprocessors, then a smaller business for Intel than memory chips. “Intel equalled memories in all of our minds. How could we give up our identity?” Grove wrote. But he imposed a revolution, closing seven factories in a company-saving coup.

摩爾和格羅夫將英特爾的主業轉向微處理器時經歷了一段痛苦的歷程——相較存儲芯片，微處理器只是英特爾的副業。格羅夫寫道：“我們所有人的心目中，英特爾就等於存儲器，我們怎麼能放棄自己的身份？”可他仍銳意改革，在一次拯救公司的變革中關閉了7家工廠。

Grove’s determination to confront reality rather than to indulge in sentiment may have been instilled by being an immigrant. He was born Andras Grof to Hungarian Jewish parents, changing his name when he fled to the US as the 1956 uprising was put down by the Soviet Union.

也許是移民的經歷鑄就了格羅夫直面現實而不沉湎感傷的堅定意志。格羅夫出生於匈牙利一個猶太人家庭，本名安德拉什•格羅夫(Andras Grof)，1956年匈牙利革命被蘇聯鎮壓，格羅夫逃亡到美國，從此改名換姓。

Grove was not the only demanding Silicon Valley boss — Steve Jobs at Apple and Larry Ellison, chairman of Oracle, could be just as tough, and both founded their companies. But he was fiercely devoted to Intel’s success.

在硅谷，苛刻的老闆可不止格羅夫一個，蘋果公司(Apple)的史蒂夫•喬布斯(Steve Jobs)和甲骨文(Oracle)的拉里•埃裏森(Larry Ellison)，可能都很強硬，二者也都創立了自己的公司。但格羅夫把滿腔熱血都投入到了追求英特爾的成功。

The lesson for Silicon Valley, and other industries facing change, is to recall Grove’s ruthlessness. Those who forget will not last long.

硅谷和其他面臨變革的行業應該重溫格羅夫那種果斷的作風，否則難以長久。