科技創新 硅谷可以向首爾學到什麼

Like most young people in the Bay Area, Mike Kim grew up believing that the future of technology was being forged in Silicon Valley. Raised in Piedmont, an affluent suburb of Oakland, Kim was in college during the rise of Facebook, and he watched in amazement as tech start-ups transformed the world around him. After graduating in 2006, he found work in the industry, at Zynga, and LinkedIn.

麥克·金(Mike Kim)像美國灣區的大多數年輕人一樣，從小就相信硅谷打造着科技的未來。金在皮德蒙特長大，那是奧克蘭的一個富裕的郊區。Facebook崛起時，金正在上大學。他驚奇地看着科技初創公司變革着他周圍的世界。2006年畢業後，他在科技行業找到了工作，先後效力於Zynga、和領英(LinkedIn)。

Then, five months ago, he accepted an offer to work for Woowa Brothers, a South Korean company that runs a food-delivery start-up called Baedal Minjok. The job was great — but living in Seoul was nothing less than a revelation.

後來，就在五個月前，他接受了屋瓦兄弟(Woowa Borthers)的工作機會。這是韓國的一家公司，運營着一家食品遞送初創公司，叫做Baedal Minjok。工作本身非常好，而且在首爾生活的經歷讓他大開眼界。

“When I was in S.F., we called it the mobile capital of the world,” he said. “But I was blown away because Korea is three or four years ahead.” Back home, Kim said, people celebrate when a public park gets Wi-Fi. But in Seoul, even subway straphangers can stream movies on their phones, deep beneath the ground. “When I go back to the U.S., it feels like the Dark Ages,” he said. “It’s just not there yet.”

“在舊金山的時候，我們都把舊金山叫做世界手機之都，”他說。“但是我根本想不到韓國（比舊金山）先進了三、四年。”在美國，金說，公園有了無線網絡人們都要額手相慶。但在首爾，即便是乘地鐵上下班的人都能在手機上播放流媒體電影，哪怕是在地下很深的地方。“我回到美國，就好像回到了中世紀，”他說。“我們還沒發展到那種程度。”

While Silicon Valley is the largest and most enduring locus of tech innovation, a number of cities around the planet are nipping at its heels: Tel Aviv, Berlin, Bangalore. But Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is in a sense the Valley’s closest rival. American investors are beginning to catch on, and venture capital is starting to flow west, across the Pacific. An early-stage American venture firm called 500 Startups recently spun off a small fund called 500 Kimchi, which focuses exclusively on South Korea. Last fall, Goldman Sachs led a round of investment in Woowa Brothers and its delivery service. In May, Google opened a campus in Seoul, its first in Asia. The office is in the trendy district of Gangnam — yes, that Gangnam — which is already home to a growing cluster of mobile start-ups and a handful of technology incubators to mentor them.

儘管硅谷仍是最大也是最持久的科技創新中心，不過世界上的不少城市正在急起直追：特拉維夫、柏林、班加羅爾。但在某種意義上，韓國首都首爾是與硅谷最接近的對手。美國投資者開始意識到這一點，風險投資也向西流動，跨過了太平洋。美國一家名叫創業500(500 Startups)的早期風投公司最近將一項名爲“泡菜500”(500 Kimchi)的小基金分離了出來，專門聚焦韓國。去年秋天，高盛集團引領了一輪投資，投向屋瓦兄弟及其遞送服務。五月，谷歌公司在首爾開放了一個辦公園區。這是谷歌在亞洲的第一個辦公園區。辦公地點就位於新潮的江南區——沒錯，就是《江南Style》裏的那個江南——這一地區已經聚集了一批手機初創企業，其數量日益增長，那裏還有一些科技孵化公司對他們進行指導。

Tim Chae, who runs 500 Kimchi, said that American investors have begun to think of Seoul as a sort of crystal ball. In it, they can glimpse a future where the most ambitious dreams of Silicon Valley — a cashless, carless, everything-on-demand society — have already been realized. Nearly all of Seoul’s residents use smartphones, and many of the services just now gaining in popularity in the United States have been commonplace in South Korea for years.

泡菜500的經營人蒂姆·蔡(Tim Chae)說，美國投資者已經開始把首爾當作某種水晶球，通過它可以看到，硅谷最宏大的夢想——一個無鈔、無車、一切應有盡有的社會——已經實現了。幾乎所有的首爾居民都用智能手機，很多現在纔剛剛在美國流行起來的服務，在韓國早已司空見慣。

Much of this was made possible by two decades of enormous public investment. Seoul is blanketed with free Wi-Fi that offers the world’s fastest Internet speeds — twice as fast as the average American’s. Back in 1995, the government began a 10-year plan to build out the country’s broadband infrastructure and, through a series of public programs, to teach Koreans what they could do with it. South Korea also eased regulations on service providers to ensure that consumers would have a multitude of choices — in marked contrast to America, where a handful of cable and telecommunications monopolies dominate the market. Such healthy competition in Korea keeps the cost of access low.

這在很大程度是由於20年來巨大的公共投資。首爾已被免費的無線網絡覆蓋，且網速爲世界最快，爲美國平均網速的兩倍。早在1995年，政府就開展了一項十年計劃來建設國家的寬帶基礎設施，並且通過一系列公共項目來教韓國人如何使用這些設施。韓國也放寬了對服務供應商的管制，以確保消費者有多種選擇，這與少數幾家有線與電信巨頭統治下的美國形成鮮明對比。在韓國，這種良性競爭使得網絡接入成本保持在較低水平。

To maintain South Korea’s lead, the country’s Science Ministry recently announced a $1.5 billion initiative to upgrade Korea’s mobile infrastructure. By 2020, the government predicts, it will be 1,000 times faster — so fast you could download a feature-length movie in approximately one second. In the same time frame, the Federal Communications Commission hopes to wire most American homes with broadband Internet with speeds of at least 100 megabits per second, or roughly one-sixtieth of South Korea’s goal.

爲了保持韓國的領先地位，韓國教育科學技術部(Science Ministry)最近宣佈了一項投資15億美元（約合93億元人民幣）的項目，對韓國的移動基礎設施進行升級。政府預計，到2020年，網速將是現在的1000倍——快到你可以在大約一秒鐘的時間裏下載一部電影長片。在同樣的時間段裏，美國聯邦通信委員會(Federal Communications Commission)的希望是給大部分家庭裝上速度至少爲每秒100MB的寬帶網絡，這個速度大致是韓國的目標的六十分之一。

South Korea may be futuristic in some regards, but from a design perspective, many of the country’s most popular web services look outmoded, like throwbacks to the ’90s. Most mobile apps and web pages are crammed with chaotic boxes of information, stacked headlines and flashing lines of text.

韓國在一些方面可能非常新潮，但從設計的角度來看，韓國很多最受歡迎的網絡服務看起來頗爲過時，像是回到了上世紀90年代。大部分移動應用和網頁上塞滿了雜亂的信息框、堆砌的標題和閃爍着出現的一行行文字。

This is certainly true of KakaoTalk, a messaging app that is installed on 93 percent of Korea’s smartphones. KakaoTalk was developed in 2010 by Beom-su Kim, an early web pioneer in Korea who built a popular online gaming portal called Hangame. A failed effort to take Hangame to the United States happened to coincide with the release of the first iPhone. Beom-su Kim bought several and began developing apps for them, a full two years before the device would arrive in South Korea. KakaoTalk was one of his first creations.

這一點無疑可以在韓國93%的智能手機都安裝了的即時通訊應用KakaoTalk上看到。KakaoTalk是韓國早期的網絡先驅金凡秀(Beom-su Kim)於2010年開發出來的。金凡秀創建了一個用戶衆多的在線遊戲門戶Hangame。他試圖將該門戶推向美國，不過失敗了，當時恰逢第一代iPhone問世。金凡秀買了幾部iPhone，並開始爲它們開發應用。這比iPhone登陸韓國早了足足兩年。KakaoTalk就是他的首批作品之一。

The app was quickly adopted by Korean users as a free alternative to text messaging. Part of its success is due to the fact that KakaoTalk functions like its own version of the Internet within a smartphone: Users don’t have to close the app, ever, to check the news, talk to friends, order dinner or play games. To an American, the app’s design is insane, like stepping into a demented fun house. Pages are drenched in neon and populated with googly-eyed cartoon animals.

這款應用很快在韓國用戶中得到普及，被當成了短信的免費替代品。它的成功部分是因爲，KakaoTalk的作用有點像在智能手機內自成一體的互聯網：用戶任何時候都不用關閉這款應用便可以查看新聞、聯繫朋友、點餐和玩遊戲。在美國人看來，它的設計不可理喻，讓人覺得像是走進了一座能把人逼瘋的遊樂宮。頁面通體閃爍着霓虹燈，還有瞪着眼的卡通動物。

By contrast, American mobile design is fetishistically minimalist. Silicon Valley applauds itself for good taste in this regard, but this aesthetic has sprung up partly in response to a deficiency: Americans have learned to strip out bandwidth-guzzling elements because they slow down loading times. Korean designers, lacking such bandwidth restraints, can stuff their apps full of all the information and widgets they like. On-screen real estate isn’t an issue, either, because Koreans prefer massive phones. While the “phablet” — the missing link between a phone and a tablet — is popular as a punch line in the United States, it’s been in high demand in South Korea for years.

相比之下，美國的移動應用設計有一種極簡崇拜。硅谷在這方面自視品味卓絕，但這種審美部分一定程度上是某種缺陷導致的：美國人已經學會剔除應用中會消耗大量帶寬的設計，因爲這些會增加載入時間。韓國設計師們由於沒有類似的寬帶限制，可以在應用中任意添置各種各樣的信息和小部件。屏幕空間也不是問題，因爲韓國人喜歡大屏手機。介於手機和平板電腦之間的平板手機，在美國常被當成笑料，在韓國卻是熱銷多年。

This trans-Pacific gap in bandwidth is so pronounced that Korean developers often have to strip down their software if they want to take it stateside. Nicole Kim, chief executive of a file-sharing service called Sunshine, which recently opened an office in San Francisco, said the service had to be adapted to inferior American broadband. “We made Sunshine simpler because the speeds are quite lower than the Korean and Hong Kong networks,” she said. She says her engineers recoded the app to allow for the sharing of smaller items, like design files and business documents. In Asia, people use Sunshine for more bandwidth-intensive files, like music and videos.

太平洋兩岸寬帶速度差距之大，通常讓韓國軟件開發者不得不刪除軟件的部分功能才能推向美國銷售。文件分享服務應用Sunshine最近剛在舊金山開設分部，其執行總裁妮可·金(Nicole Kim)說，公司的服務必須要考慮到美國較低的寬帶速度。“我們簡化了Sunshine，因爲美國的網速比韓國、香港低了不少，”她說。她稱她的工程師因此要重新寫程序用於分享較小的文件，比如設計文件和商業文件。而在亞洲，人們用Sunshine分享對寬帶要求較高的文件，比如音樂和視頻。

Even when Korean firms don’t encounter technological issues, the design gulch can confound their attempts to lure American customers. In 2014, Doyon Kim was tasked with taking Band, a South Korean mobile-messaging app, to Silicon Valley. Band lets friends chat, plan outings, share video files, split bills and even conduct informal polls about where to go to dinner. Doyon Kim says that the sheer number of Band’s functions confused users who were not accustomed to performing all of those tasks within a single app.

即使韓國公司不面臨技術難題，設計方面的鴻溝也會爲吸引美國客戶增加困難。2014年金東陽(Doyon Kim)負責將韓國移動訊息應用Band打入硅谷。Band支持朋友聊天、計劃出行、分享視頻、分攤賬單，甚至還可以發起非正式投票討論就餐地點。金東陽說，正是Band的多功能性使用戶感到困惑，他們不習慣在一個應用裏處理這麼多事務。

“As a newcomer in the United States, products have to have one strong feature to market,” he said. “Band had so many features and functionalities, that when people saw the product, they didn’t really get it.” The app got lost in the mix of services like GroupMe, Venmo, Tilt and Dropbox — well-established stand-alone products that let people perform the individual functions that Band offered. Despite attracting 30 million users in South Korea, in the United States, “It barely made a blip.”

“作爲剛剛登陸美國的產品，產品本身在市場上必須有一個矚目的賣點，”他說。“Band有太多特色功能，人們用它時無法完全掌握這個產品。”這個應用淹沒在了比如GroupMe、Venmo、Tilt、Dropbox這樣比較成功的產品中，而Band所提供的服務正是這些專注於某一項功能的產品的集合。Band在韓國吸引了3000萬用戶，但在美國“幾乎沒多大動靜”。

Silicon Valley’s single-use obsession found its most absurd expression last summer in the infamous rise of an app called Yo. Yo allows users to send messages saying one thing only — “Yo.” — and thanks to its charming idiocy, it became an overnight sensation. It quickly raised $1.5 million and was valued at as much as 10 times that, despite having, to put it mildly, extremely limited utility. Still, it spawned a series of other hypersimple applications, including “Lo,” which lets you share your location, and “1minLate,” which automatically alerts your friends when you’re running late. The success of Yo revealed a lot about Silicon Valley ideology: For all the changing-the-world talk, novelty frequently outweighs functionality.

硅谷對單一功能應用的執着，最荒誕的例證是去年夏天風靡的應用軟件Yo。這個軟件只允許用戶發一種信息——“Yo”，這種傻乎乎的可愛，讓它一夜間引起巨大轟動。雖然它的實用價值，委婉地說，極度有限，但卻很快吸引到150萬美元投資，身價據估計更是這個數字的十倍。它也催生了其他一系列超級簡單的應用，其中包括分享用戶所在地點的“Lo”和自動通知朋友你會比約定時間遲到一點的“1minLate”。Yo的成功很大程度上揭示了硅谷的理念：嘴上說着“改變世界”，但實際上新奇往往勝過實用。

Among the wave of single-use apps is a category that has come to be called “Ubers for X” — firms that, as Uber does with cars, promise the delivery of a service in physical space at the tap of a button. A site called Product Hunt lists dozens of them, and, as a group, they’re enlightening. There’s Shortcut (Uber for haircuts), Minibar (Uber for alcohol), Doughbies On-Demand (Uber for fresh chocolate-chip cookies), JetMe (Uber for private jets), Eaze (Uber for marijuana) and many more. None of these has radically altered the way Americans live, perhaps because the ideal customer of all these services — wealthy, likes snacks, smokes pot — probably already works in Silicon Valley.

單一功能應用浪潮中，還出現了“Ubers for X”類應用，這類應用和提供汽車服務的Uber一樣，用戶只需按一下按鈕，就能獲得它們提供的實地服務。一個名叫Product Hunt的網站羅列出了數十種這類應用服務，總體來看令人耳目一新，其中包括Shortcut(提供理髮服務的Uber)，Minibar(提供酒水的Uber)，Doughbies On-demand （提供新鮮巧克力碎餅乾的Uber）, JetMe （提供私人飛機的Uber），Eaze（提供大麻的Uber），等等。這些應用都沒有徹底改變美國人的生活方式，可能是因爲所有這些服務的理想客戶——富有，喜歡零食和大麻——都已經在硅谷工作了。

In Korea, apps that depend on widespread demand for convenience stand a much better chance. Eric Kim, a founder of Goodwater Capital, a global venture firm that invests heavily in South Korea, said that the country’s high population density and relative homogeneity makes it ideal for testing out new mobile services. There are about 50 million people in South Korea, and one in five of them lives in Seoul. Services that would be logistically difficult to deploy in much of the United States scale easily in the capital.

在韓國，爲廣大用戶提供便利的應用有更好的市場機遇。全球風投公司古德沃特資本(Goodwater Capital)在韓國進行了大量投資，其創始人埃裏克·金(Eric Kim)表示，韓國人口密度高且相對同質，因此韓國是檢驗新移動服務的理想之地。韓國大約有5000萬人口，其中五分之一居住在首爾。一些在美國會受制於物流部署困難的服務，在韓國的首都可以輕鬆實現規模化。

Eric Kim offered the example of Coupang, a rising e-commerce company that offers same-day delivery, and sometimes same-hour delivery, for things like groceries and diapers. (He is on the company’s board.) It helps that delivery culture is so deeply established in Seoul, where people are accustomed to having couriers meet them at the subway station near their homes to deliver their dry cleaning and, occasionally, their dinner. Meanwhile, most Americans are still adjusting to using Amazon for more than books and gifts.

埃裏克·金還以Coupang公司爲例，這家剛剛崛起的電子商務公司提供當日送貨服務，有時還提供一小時內送貨的服務，送貨物品諸如生鮮食品和紙尿片。（埃裏克是該公司董事。）韓國的送貨文化根深蒂固，這對Coupang十分有利，人們習慣了約快遞員在家附近的地鐵站簽收他們的乾洗衣物，有時還有晚餐。相較之下，大多數的美國還不適應在亞馬遜(Amazon)購買圖書和禮物以外的東西。

South Korea’s biggest start-ups are still dwarfed by the behemoths of California. But the Valley is keen to learn from their businesses, many of which turn healthy profits — something that many celebrated start-ups don’t do.

在加利福尼亞的巨頭面前，韓國那些最大的初創公司仍舊是相形見絀。但是硅谷熱衷於學習韓國公司的經營方式，雖然其中的很多經營方式創造了可觀的利潤——許多聲名顯赫的初創公司尚做不到這一點。

One thing Silicon Valley hopes to learn is how to get Americans to actually pay for things on their phones. For years now, Koreans have carried out important daily transactions, like paying bills and shopping, on their smartphones. They’re also more inclined to pay for virtual accouterments that liven up digital interactions: for example, virtual stickers that, for $1 to $2 per pack, can be pasted into online and mobile chats. Line and KakaoTalk are among the largest mobile chatting apps in South Korea, with revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and only a portion of their income is derived from advertising. The rest comes from selling those digital stickers, as well as music and games.

如何讓美國人真的在手機上付費，這是硅谷需要向韓國學習的一件事。韓國人很多年前就已經開始在手機上進行重要的日常交易，例如用智能手機支付賬單和購物。韓國人還喜歡購買虛擬商品，這爲數碼互動增添了生氣。比如說，價格在1至2美元的虛擬表情包，可以貼在網上和移動聊天室。連我(Line)和Kakao Talk位居韓國最大的移動聊天應用之列，收入在數億美元的級別，其中只有一部分來自於廣告。其餘的來自數字貼紙以及音樂和遊戲的銷售。

Silicon Valley might also learn how to cater to more customers in more countries around the world. Most Korean companies have been internationally minded since their inception, aware of their own limitations: South Korea is such a small market that entrepreneurs are forced to consider how they might adapt to business abroad.

硅谷可能還要學會如何迎合更多國家的顧客需求。大部分的韓國公司在創立之初便具備了國際頭腦，很清楚自己存在的侷限性：韓國的市場非常的小，因此創業者們不得不考慮如何適應海外的商業環境。

But without a more affordable, better mobile web, even the best new offerings from American entrepreneurs will be stuck in the past. Perhaps one of the biggest lessons Silicon Valley’s innovators should learn from South Korea is that to radically change how everyday people live their lives, they’ll need to convince their nation to invest in infrastructure, so that we can actually use the services they want to sell us.

然而，如果沒有一個更廉價、更優質的移動網絡，即便是美國創業者推出的最佳產品也會跟不上時代。或許硅谷的創新人士應該向韓國學習的最重要的經驗之一便是，如何給人們的日常生活帶去劇烈的變化，他們需要說服自己的國家進行基礎設施投資，只有這樣我們才能夠真正使用到他們想要賣給我們的服務。