重温安迪格罗夫的硅谷精神 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.

与其说硅谷是一个地名，不如说它代表着一种精神。它并非一道单一的峡谷——在加利福尼亚州北部，矗立在帕罗奥图(Palo Alto)、库比蒂诺(Cupertino)和芒廷维尤(Mountain View)周围的山丘并不具有构成峡谷的高度。自从飞兆半导体(Fairchild Semiconductor)、摩托罗拉(Motorola)、德州仪器(Texas Instruments)、英特尔(Intel)之类的公司崛起以来，硅谷如今的主要产业也不再依托于硅这种生产半导体的原材料。

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 you.ger. It was created on the other side of the country, in a Harvard dormitory, by Mark Zuckerberg and friends in 2004.

硅谷不懈创新的精神从以下事实中可见一斑：谷歌（Google，现为Alphabet旗下子公司）和Facebook都已是硅谷最知名的公司。它们都不属于硅行业。谷歌1998年才创立，而更为“年轻”的Facebook，是2004年由马克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)和其朋友们在位于美国另一端的哈佛大学的宿舍里创立的。

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.

硅谷历史上一个影响深远的时刻出现在1985年，彼时英特尔徘徊在安迪•格罗夫(Andy Grove)——两位创始人罗伯特•诺伊斯(Robert Noyce)和戈登•摩尔(Gordon Moore)手下的首席雇员——所称的“死亡之谷”，他的意思是指一家公司被对手打败的时期。格罗夫后来成为英特尔的首席执行官和董事长，他于3月21日辞世，享年79岁。

“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.

“我望着窗外远处大美洲主题公园里旋转着的摩天轮，转向戈登（时任英特尔首席执行官）问‘如果我们下台了，公司再任命一个新CEO，你觉得他会怎么办？’” 格罗夫在他1996年出版的有关管理的书《只有偏执狂才能生存》(Only the Paranoid Survive)中这样写道。

“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，‘他会放弃存储器业务（存储芯片是英特尔的立命之本，而当时市场却已是日本厂商的天下）。’我呆呆地注视着他，然后说，‘那我们为什么不这么做呢？’”

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.

《只有偏执狂才能生存》书名本身即明白表达出格罗夫意欲传达的信条。与戴维•帕卡德(David Packard)所著讲述惠普公司立世哲学的《惠普之道》(The HP Way)一样，这本书也蕴含着硅谷管理哲学的精髓。

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.

惠普在硅谷首创了宽松的、参与式的组织文化，而英特尔则代表着硅谷公司身上那种强烈、不懈的竞争意识。格罗夫使“战略转折点”的概念流行开来，这是指企业发展历程中“其根基将要发生改变”的时点。正因咫尺之遥就有人对你虎视眈眈，企业唯有永不松懈、永不停下发展的步伐。

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，一家成立于互联网时代的公司，目前就处于死亡之谷。现任CEO玛丽莎•梅耶尔(Marissa Mayer)为谷歌前高管，她试图化解雅虎的战略窘境而未能成功。积极型对冲基金斯塔博德(Starboard Value)近日要求撤换雅虎整个董事会。

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就干得非常漂亮，其在全球有16亿个月活跃用户，凭借在互联网和移动客户端上的广告优势，去年Facebook实现了接近180亿美元的收入。在社交网络领域，Facebook的地位相当于20世纪90年代微处理器领域的英特尔：绝对统治。Facebook位于帕罗奥图斯坦福大学(Stanford University)外围的园区总部，明显借鉴了惠普。一条沃尔特•迪士尼(Walt Disney)风格的栈道经过主楼旁，员工们可以在栈道上散步晒太阳，从餐车上取冰淇淋和食品，再骑车去上班。其建筑的设计者为弗兰克•盖里(Frank Gehry)，即毕尔巴鄂古根汉美术馆(Museo Guggenheim Bilbao)的建筑师。

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.

但扎克伯格也从格罗夫身上学到了一些东西。这位Facebook的创始人近日被拍到在北京故宫和天安门广场慢跑，照片上扎克伯格微笑着，并未戴口罩，似乎对中国严重的雾霾不以为然。随后扎克伯格见到了中国共产党中央政治局常委刘云山。

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.

他的意图很明显：Facebook已拥有众多用户，但由于在中国被屏蔽，14亿中国民众还未加入Facebook。中国同样有一个拥有全球抱负的科技行业，领军的是像阿里巴巴这样的公司，它们有点像上世纪80年代崛起并与英特尔分庭抗礼的日本企业。要应对这样的威胁，扎克伯格需要克服很多困难，包括学习中国的普通话。

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.

摩尔和格罗夫将英特尔的主业转向微处理器时经历了一段痛苦的历程——相较存储芯片，微处理器只是英特尔的副业。格罗夫写道：“我们所有人的心目中，英特尔就等于存储器，我们怎么能放弃自己的身份？”可他仍锐意改革，在一次拯救公司的变革中关闭了7家工厂。

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.

也许是移民的经历铸就了格罗夫直面现实而不沉湎感伤的坚定意志。格罗夫出生于匈牙利一个犹太人家庭，本名安德拉什•格罗夫(Andras Grof)，1956年匈牙利革命被苏联镇压，格罗夫逃亡到美国，从此改名换姓。

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，苛刻的老板可不止格罗夫一个，苹果公司(Apple)的史蒂夫•乔布斯(Steve Jobs)和甲骨文(Oracle)的拉里•埃里森(Larry Ellison)，可能都很强硬，二者也都创立了自己的公司。但格罗夫把满腔热血都投入到了追求英特尔的成功。

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

硅谷和其他面临变革的行业应该重温格罗夫那种果断的作风，否则难以长久。