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Schumpeter 熊彼得 Creative capitalism 创新资本主义 Other industries have a lot to learn from Hollywood 其他工业部门要向好莱坞学习很多 Nov 1st 2014 | From the print edition of The Economist 译者：crazybull THE main building on Disney’s studio lot has seven huge replicas of Snow White’s dwarfs holding up its roof, a reminder of how Hollywood does not take itself too seriously. Nor do many outsiders. Film is an eccentric business, filled with egos and excess. For most of their history, studios have had neither the stunning returns of startups nor the steady profits of mature firms. They are famed for blowing vast sums on high-profile turkeys. “Heaven’s Gate”, an extravagant flop in 1980, crushed United Artists, the studio Charlie Chaplin and other stars founded in 1919. 七个巨大的白雪公主小矮人复制品支撑着迪斯尼工作室主建筑的顶部，提醒人们不只是很多局外人，连好莱坞自己也不把自己当回事儿。电影业是奇怪的，充斥着自我和非凡。影业公司的历史中，大多没有创业公司那样的惊人回报也没有成熟公司那样稳定的利润。他们倒是因为砸大把的资金给高调却失败的作品而闻名。1980年的《天堂之门》就是一个极度浪费的彻底失败，这部作品压垮了查理.卓别林和其他影星在1919年创立的联美电影公司。 Few business-school professors would ever think to walk the red carpet and use Hollywood as a case study. However, it is time they tuned in to Tinseltown. One reason is that other industries are coming to resemble the film business in some ways. In today’s knowledge-based economy, bosses are having to spend more time managing flighty “stars”. Food and consumer-goods makers are, as the studios have already done, seeking to focus more on a narrower range of “blockbusters”; and in industries from electronics to carmaking, the pace of product and brand launches is increasing, so Hollywood’s ability to create a buzz rapidly about a new film may offer valuable lessons. 很少有商学院的教授想到过走过红地毯，用好莱坞做研究案例。然而，到了关注浮华城的时候了。（浮华城=好莱坞）一个原因是，其他工业部门在某些意义上越来越像电影业。如今是知识经济的时代，老板们不得不花更多的时间来管理那些反复无常的“明星”。（企业里的管理骨干和技术骨干）食品以及消费品制造商正在试图更专注于更窄范围内的“大片儿”（轰动畅销产品），而影业公司早已对此驾轻就熟。从电子产业到汽车制造，产品和品牌的推出速度越来越快。好莱坞在推出一部新电影时创造出呼啸而过的速度的能力，是有学习价值的。 Furthermore, movie-making is an American success story. It is one of the few remaining industries in which the country’s grip on the global market is as strong as it has ever been. China’s Chollywood and India’s Bollywood do not make films that people in other countries line up to see. America’s film and television industry reckons its exports are worth around $16 billion a year. 再者，拍电影也是一个美国人的成功故事。电影业是美国仅余的几个有史以来最能牢牢掌控全球市场的产业之一。中国的周莱坞和印度的宝莱坞拍不出让其他国家观众排队买票的电影。估计，美国的电影以及电视产业出口额大约有每年160亿美元。 Every company that employs creative people must think about how to harness their strengths for commercial gain without strangling their free-spiritedness. Hollywood has a century’s experience in this. Studios recruit a fresh creative team for each film, leaving its members to work intensely together with a minimum of interference, stepping in only when things are clearly going wrong. This gives team members a feeling of control and pride in their project; and to cap it all, everyone has their contribution duly acknowledged in the closing credits. 每一个雇佣有创造力的员工的公司必须考虑如何利用他们的能力创造商业收入而又不扼杀他们的自由精神。好莱坞在这方面有一个世纪的经验。电影工作室为每一部电影雇佣一个新的创作团队，放手让成员一起紧张工作很少干涉，只有在事情明显做错了的时候才介入。这种方式在项目进行过程中给团队成员以控制感和自豪感。更有甚者，每一个有贡献的成员都会出现在片尾名单上。 Such teamwork is rare in other businesses, argues Mark Young of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. People work hard and collaborate well in the movie business in part because they have little job stability. Many are freelancers, who will not get hired for the next film unless they prove themselves on the current one. The tough lesson from Hollywood, then, is that job insecurity can lead to greater productivity, as long as workers believe in what they are doing and have their achievements recognised 南加州大学马歇尔商学院的Mark Young认为，这样的团队合作在其他商业领域很少见。电影工业中，人们辛苦工作通力合作部分原因是因为他们的工作稳定性差。很多是自由职业者，如果他们不能在当前的这部电影证明自己，下一部电影就不会再雇佣他们。那么，从好莱坞学到了艰辛一课：只要员工相信他们正在做的事业并且认可他们的成就，工作的不安全感可以带来更大的生产力。 Hollywood is a land of retakes. Everyone understands that constant revisions improve the product. In a recent book, “Creativity, Inc.”, Ed Catmull, the founder of Pixar and president of Disney Animation, argues that every film starts out as an “ugly baby”, growing through countless changes into a graceful adult. “Up”, Pixar’s hit film from 2009 about a widower who travels around the world with the help of balloons, began with a completely different premise. It was reworked drastically on the advice of the “Braintrust”, an internal group set up to give frank feedback. Mobile-app firms can also be adept at adjusting products in response to internal and external feedback, and makers of consumer goods are learning to tweak their products and packaging in response to reviews. But in many businesses, bosses still tend to spurn constructive criticism 在好莱坞经常有改拍或者重拍。每个人都知道：经常的修正能改善产品。在最近一本名为《创造力和公司》的书中，皮克斯工作室的创始人、迪斯尼动画的总裁艾德.卡特穆尔就说：每一部电影开始就像一个“坏孩子”，经过无数次的改变最终成长为一个优雅的成人。《向上》，是皮克斯在2009年摄制的一部电影，讲述了一个鳏夫借助气球的帮助环游地球，此片开始于一个完全不同的假设。内部建起了小组（智囊团）给予这个假设直率的意见反馈，在智能团的建议下，该片做了大幅度的再加工。移动应用公司也可以根据来自内部和外部的反馈意见熟练地调整产品。消费品制造商也正在学习根据评论来改变他们的产品或者包装。但是在很多行业里，老板依旧轻视建设性的批评。 Like Hollywood, California’s other world-beating industrial cluster, Silicon Valley, has overcome the fear of failure. Films are like tech startups in that flops are tolerated because they are so common, even when the initial idea seemed promising. In both cases, the value of failure as a learning experience is well understood. So in this part of American life, there are second, and third, acts. Studio heads sometimes roll when a film flops, but executives, directors and other talent can find redemption 和好莱坞一样，加州另外一个领先全球的产业集群是硅谷，也克服了对失败的恐惧。电影业像技术创业公司，即使初始的理念看起来很有前途，因为这些产业里彻底失败很常见所以是能容忍的。在这两个产业中，“积累了经验失败就有价值”被广泛接受。这里的美国人的生活就是：第二次，第三次，去做！电影工作室的头儿可能因为某次彻底失败而爬不起来，但是制片人、导演以及其他人才能得到补偿。 Perhaps Hollywood’s most remarkable skill is in launching brands that achieve global prominence in a matter of days. Each film is a separate product that needs its own marketing, and the stakes are incredibly high: if it has not gained sufficient momentum by its opening weekend, it may sink without trace. Studios spend vast sums on promotional campaigns, often as much as they spend on producing the film itself. Businesses that are sceptical about the value of marketing, and about the possibilities for creating consumer awareness rapidly, should look closely at how Hollywood manages to come up with new brands on a near-weekly basis. The key is to treat the marketing as a core part of the project, rather than as an afterthought 也许，好莱坞最非凡的本领就是在短短几天里推出品牌并让它蜚声全球。每一部电影都是一个单独的产品，需要它自己的市场，赌注也出奇的大：如果在首映的周末没有取得强劲的势头，它就会销声匿迹。工作室花大手笔用于宣传活动，经常和电影的制作成本一样高。那些对营销的价值以及快速创造消费意识的可能性持怀疑态度的行业，应该仔细观察一下好莱坞是怎样设法跟上几乎以星期为单位的新品牌（推出）。关键是把营销作为项目的一个核心，而不是把营销放在计划外。 Sunrise Boulevard 金光大道 For all the film industry’s reputation as a licence to lose money, the media conglomerates that own the big studios nowadays run them more professionally, and keep a closer eye on profitability. Three of the six Hollywood “majors” are now managed by business-school graduates. Film companies no longer have extravagant numbers of projects in development, and focus more on action-packed “franchise” films featuring comic-book characters, which sell well abroad and lend themselves to sequels. Learning from Silicon Valley, Hollywood is relying more on outside financing, which means sharing the profits from hits but also protects against crippling losses when a film flops. 虽然电影业容易赔钱是出了名的，媒体大亨们旗下的大型电影公司如今经营更为专业，也更加关注盈利状况。好莱坞“六大影业公司”之中的三个现在由商学院毕业生管理。影业公司不再有极多的待开发项目，而是更致力于有动漫人物特色的动作类影片的“特许经营”，因为这类片子在海外市场卖座，还能出续集。向硅谷学习，好莱坞正在越来越多依赖外部融资，也就是：如果电影大卖则分享利润，如果失败了也不会损失惨重。 No one likes to talk about age in Hollywood, but it has enjoyed remarkable longevity. The studios have survived the threats from new technologies like television and the internet, and “pivoted” repeatedly to adjust their output to audiences’ shifting tastes. Few businesses have refreshed their product line-ups so often. And few have restructured so thoroughly: studios have evolved from being vertically integrated groups that owned cinemas and kept actors on the payroll to become asset-light, flexible renters of talent. In the 102 years since the founding of Universal Pictures, the oldest of the majors, Hollywood may have provided plenty of “how not to” examples for business—but it has plenty of positive ones too. 好莱坞人不喜欢谈论年龄，但是好莱坞已经相当的高寿了。那些在诸如电视以及互联网之类的新科技威胁中存活下来的电影工作室，不断随着观众口味的变动而转变。有几家经常刷新他们的产品阵容，有几家已经彻底的重组：电影工作室已经从拥有电影院发工资养着演员的垂直一体化集团进化为“轻资产”，灵活雇佣人才。六大影业公司最年长的一个，环球影业创立的102年里，好莱坞为商业提供了大量的“为什么不赚钱”的例子---但也提供了很多积极的案例。 From the print edition: Business |
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