Schumpeter

熊彼得

Fail often, fail well

吃一塹，長一智

Companies have a great deal to learn from failure—provided they manage it successfully

失敗是成功之徑——如果公司能成功地控制失敗

Apr 14th 2011 | from the print edition of The Economist

譯者：skittos

BUSINESS writers have always worshipped at the altar of success. Tom Peters turned himself into a superstar with “In Search of Excellence”. Stephen Covey has sold more than 15m copies of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. Malcolm Gladwell cleverly subtitled his third book, “Outliers”, “The Story of Success”. This success-fetish makes the latest management fashion all the more remarkable. The April issue of the Harvard Business Review is devoted to failure, featuring among other contributors A.G. Lafley, a successful ex-boss of Procter & Gamble (P&G), proclaiming that “we learn much more from failure than we do from success.” The current British edition of Wired magazine has “Fail! Fast. Then succeed. What European business needs to learn from Silicon Valley” on its cover. IDEO, a consultancy, has coined the slogan “Fail often in order to succeed sooner”.

商業(yè)作者向來愛把“成功”捧上神壇。湯姆·彼得斯通過一本《追求卓越》，結(jié)果把自己追成了超星。史蒂芬·科爾已經(jīng)成功銷出了1500萬冊《高效能人士的七個習慣》。馬爾科姆·葛拉威爾為他的第三本書《異類：不一樣的成功啟示錄》起了個討巧的副標題。 這種盲目的崇拜成功成了最新潮的管理指導。與之相逆，四月刊的《哈佛商業(yè)評論》將焦點放在 “失敗”上 。這期的專題報道人物中包括前寶潔公司的成功掌舵人A.G.雷富禮，他在文中宣稱：“我們從失敗中學到東西要遠遠比從成功中學到的多”。本期英國版《連線》雜志在封面上登出的標題為：“栽吧！快點！繼而成功。歐洲企業(yè)需要向硅谷學習什么”。 艾迪歐咨詢公司（IDEO）所設(shè)計勵志口號是“多栽跟頭才能加速成功”。

There are good reasons for the failure fashion. Success and failure are not polar opposites: you often need to endure the second to enjoy the first. Failure can indeed be a better teacher than success. It can also be a sign of creativity. The best way to avoid short-term failure is to keep churning out the same old products, though in the long term this may spell your doom. Businesses cannot invent the future—their own future—without taking risks.

時尚失敗有其充分的理由。成功與失敗并非兩個完全對立的極端。你常常需要忍受后者才能享受前者。而相對于成功，失敗其實是個更加有益的良師，也是激發(fā)創(chuàng)造力的征兆。為了避免短期的失利，企業(yè)通常采用最安全的方法，大量生產(chǎn)同類老產(chǎn)品。從長遠來看，它卻可能把自己送上了窮途末路。不敢承擔風險，就不能闖出新路、創(chuàng)造自己的未來。

Entrepreneurs have always understood this. Thomas Edison performed 9,000 experiments before coming up with a successful version of the light bulb. Students of entrepreneurship talk about the J-curve of returns: the failures come early and often and the successes take time. America has proved to be more entrepreneurial than Europe in large part because it has embraced a culture of “failing forward” as a common tech-industry phrase puts it: in Germany bankruptcy can end your business career whereas in Silicon Valley it is almost a badge of honour.

上述道理，其實企業(yè)家都懂的。愛迪生做了9000次實驗才想出了一只成功的燈泡雛形。商科學生所討論的投入回報J型曲線表明：失敗早來常來，成功緩緩而遲。事實證明美國比歐洲更具企業(yè)家精神，其很大原因在于美國接受（擁抱）“轉(zhuǎn)敗為勝”的文化，用句科技行業(yè)中的常用俗語來表達就是：在德國，破產(chǎn)能送掉你的商業(yè)前程；在硅谷，它簡直就像一枚榮譽勛章。

A more tolerant attitude to failure can also help companies to avoid destruction. When Alan Mulally became boss of an ailing Ford Motor Company in 2006 one of the first things he did was demand that his executives own up to their failures. He asked managers to colour-code their progress reports—ranging from green for good to red for trouble. At one early meeting he expressed astonishment at being confronted by a sea of green, even though the company had lost several billion dollars in the previous year. Ford’s recovery began only when he got his managers to admit that things weren’t entirely green.

對失敗采取更容許的心態(tài)也能夠幫助公司避免被摧毀的命運。在2006年，阿蘭·穆拉利掌管了境況不佳福特汽車公司之后，首當其沖的事務之一便是要求他的高管誠對自己的失敗。他讓高管用顏色來標示進度匯報——顏色范圍由綠色（佳況）至紅色（劣境）。 在一次早期的會議上，他對眼前一片綠色的汪洋大感驚詫，因為上年的公司損失已達幾十億美元。直到他讓這些高管承認公司業(yè)務并非全部綠意盈然之后，福特才開始邁出復蘇的步伐。

Failure is also becoming more common. John Hagel, of Deloitte’s Centre for the Edge (which advises bosses on technology), calculates that the average time a company spends in the S&P 500 index has declined from 75 years in 1937 to about 15 years today. Up to 90% of new businesses fail shortly after being founded. Venture-capital firms are lucky if 20% of their investments pay off. Pharmaceutical companies research hundreds of molecular groups before coming up with a marketable drug. Less than 2% of films account for 80% of box-office returns.

失敗現(xiàn)象如今也越來越普遍。德勤前沿中心 (為老板提供技術(shù)建議)的負責人約翰·哈格爾作了一項計算，在標準普爾500指數(shù)中，一家公司所能保持的平均年數(shù)已經(jīng)從1937年的75年減少到現(xiàn)在的15年左右。約90%以上的新公司在成立后不久便宣告失敗。風險投資公司如果能有20%的投資賺到錢就算運氣了。制藥公司要經(jīng)過研究數(shù)以百計的分子團之后，才能推出一種適合市場的藥品。電影業(yè)中80%的票房收入來自不到2%的影片。

But simply “embracing” failure would be as silly as ignoring it. Companies need to learn how to manage it. Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School argues that the first thing they must do is distinguish between productive and unproductive failures. There is nothing to be gained from tolerating defects on the production line or mistakes in the operating theatre.

然而，僅僅限于“擁抱”失敗的話，就和忽視失敗一樣是可笑而荒唐的，公司需要研究如何控制失敗。哈佛商學院的艾米·艾姆森認為，公司必須首先區(qū)分有益和無益失敗之間的差別，如容許生產(chǎn)流水線上出廢品或手術(shù)室中出醫(yī)療事故是不會讓你有任何收益的。

This might sound like an obvious distinction. But it is one that some of the best minds in business have failed to make. James McNerney, a former boss of 3M, a manufacturer, damaged the company’s innovation engine by trying to apply six-sigma principles (which are intended to reduce errors on production lines) to the entire company, including the research laboratories. It is only a matter of time before a boss, hypnotised by all the current talk of “rampant experimentation”, makes the opposite mistake.

這種“區(qū)別”能力雖然貌似基本常識，但商界中一些最優(yōu)秀的人材都未能做對這件事。3M前老板、制造業(yè)的詹姆斯·麥克納尼把six-sigma原理 (用于減少生產(chǎn)線上的出錯率) 應用在整個公司包括研究實驗室的運作上，結(jié)果損害了公司的創(chuàng)新引擎。 作為一位老板，為當時流行的 “瘋狂實驗”盲目狂熱，那他遲早會制造出與實驗結(jié)果相反的錯誤。

Companies must also recognise the virtues of failing small and failing fast. Peter Sims likens this to placing “Little Bets”, in a new book of that title. Chris Rock, one of the world’s most successful comedians, tries out his ideas in small venues, often bombing and always junking more material than he saves. Jeff Bezos, the boss of Amazon, compares his company’s strategy to planting seeds, or “going down blind alleys”. One of those blind alleys, letting small shops sell books on the company’s website, now accounts for a third of its sales.

公司還必須認識到小敗與速敗的好處。彼得·西姆斯在他的一本同名新書《小賭注》里，把這比作“小賭注”。世界上最成功的喜劇演員之一克里斯·洛克愛在小眾場合試行他的搞笑創(chuàng)意并經(jīng)常遭遇冷場，而且他擯棄的素材總是多過能用的好段子。亞馬遜的總裁杰夫貝索斯將公司的策略比喻為播種, 即所謂 “盲區(qū)撒種”。其中之一鼓勵小商店在公司網(wǎng)站上售書, 結(jié)果那部分銷售量現(xiàn)已達到了公司的三分之一。

Damage limitation

限制損失程度

Placing small bets is one of several ways that companies can limit the downside of failure. Mr Sims emphasises the importance of testing ideas on consumers using rough-and-ready prototypes: they will be more willing to give honest opinions on something that is clearly an early-stage mock-up than on something that looks like the finished product. Chris Zook, of Bain & Company, a consultancy, urges companies to keep potential failures close to their core business—perhaps by introducing existing products into new markets or new products into familiar markets. Rita Gunther McGrath of Columbia Business School suggests that companies should guard against “confirmation bias” by giving one team member the job of looking for flaws.

小賭注是公司能有效限制失敗損失的方法之一。西姆斯先生強調(diào)了讓消費者測試初始原型產(chǎn)品的重要性: 比起完成品，顧客更愿意對初期原型產(chǎn)品提出誠懇的意見。貝恩咨詢公司負責人克里斯·祖克敦促公司把潛在的失敗限制在自己的核心企業(yè)之內(nèi)——比如將現(xiàn)有產(chǎn)品引入新的市場；或者將新產(chǎn)品引進熟悉的市場。哥倫比亞商學院教授莉塔·岡瑟·麥格蘭斯建議說，公司應該防備 “確認偏誤”，并通過特定一名團隊員找錯來減少這類偏誤。

But there is no point in failing fast if you fail to learn from your mistakes. Companies are trying hard to get better at this. India’s Tata group awards an annual prize for the best failed idea. Intuit, in software, and Eli Lilly, in pharmaceuticals, have both taken to holding “failure parties”. P&G encourages employees to talk about their failures as well as their successes during performance reviews. But the higher up in the company, the bigger the egos and the greater the reluctance to admit to really big failings rather than minor ones. Bosses should remember how often failure paves the way for success: Henry Ford got nowhere with his first two attempts to start a car company, but that did not stop him.

如果你不能從錯誤中學習，即使失敗得再快也變得毫無意義。各家公司正奮力從中取得更好的成效。印度塔塔集團為“最佳的失敗創(chuàng)意”頒發(fā)年度獎。直覺會計軟件和美國禮來制藥兩家公司都會定期舉行 “失敗聚會”。寶潔公司鼓勵員工在業(yè)績評估時談論自己的失敗和成功。但員工在公司的地位越高就越容易自負，越不愿承認所犯的大錯誤, 只愿撿些小芝麻泛泛而論。老板們應該記住，成功之路多少次是由失敗鋪出來的: 亨利·福特當初兩次嘗試汽車公司都毫無起色，但這并沒有擋住他。

Economist.com/blogs/schumpeter