从梦想家到行动家

    当杰夫•贝索斯有了关于亚马逊（Amazon.com）的构想后，他在纽约中央公园散步时，和他当时的老板谈到了这个创意。

    那是1992年，当时贝索斯是纽约D.E. Shaw对冲基金的高级副总裁。他描述了创办网上书店的梦想。他的老板认真地听完后，给了点建议：“听起来真是个好主意，但它更适合那些没有一份好工作的人。”

    主动改变自己的人生轨迹，有这种念头的人不多，真正付诸实施的更少。但这就是梦想家和行动家的区别。贝索斯只花了48个小时就作出了决定，辞职开始创业。18年后，他仍执掌着亚马逊，这家网络公司几乎颠覆了人们全部的购物模式，雇佣着5.62万人，估值超过800亿美元。

    作为一名作家以及在《商业周刊》（Business Week）和《快速公司》（Fast Company）工作多年的资深撰稿人及编辑，多年来我一直在研究贝索斯以及很多像他一样的人们，我可以告诉你，贝索斯是少数在我们的经济生活以及在这个世界上留下积极意义的人之一。他当然会入选当代最伟大的12位企业家名单。除此之外，还有谁会跻身这个行列？过去一年，为了我的新书《世界的变革者：25位改变我们商业版图的企业家》（World Changers: 25 Entrepreneurs Who Changed Business as We Knew It (Portfolio Penguin)），我花了很多时间来思考这个问题。《财富》杂志（Fortune）也问过我，哪些人能登上榜单？我们能从他们每个人身上学到些什么？

    很多上榜者都显而易见——从已故的史蒂夫•乔布斯，他帮助苹果公司（Apple）成为了这个星球上最受追捧和最具价值的公司，到马克•扎克伯格，他的Facebook即将上市，预计将成为有史以来规模最大的IPO（超过800亿美元）。但也有一些意外人选，如印孚瑟斯（Infosys）远见卓识的创始人纳拉雅纳•穆尔蒂，他打造了印度最大的公司之一，推动了当地经济转型，令其跻身世界舞台。

    另外一个意外是，虽然女性在当今商界影响空前，但没有一位女性入选这份名单。奥普拉•温弗瑞已凭借个人名望建立了庞大的媒体王国，已故的美体小铺（Body Shop）创始人阿妮塔•罗迪克则证明，人们可以兼顾社会及环境责任和销售产品。她们显然值得尊敬，但在我看来，她们对商业或社会面貌的影响不如榜单中的人们那么深远。

    应该承认，这份当代最伟大的12位企业家榜单存在主观性。基本上，我是参考了社会和经济影响；创始人的革命性远见（同样激励着员工和其他企业家）；创新纪录；以及长期以来公司的实际表现。由这12位企业家创立和发展的、有益社会的可持续组织如今合计市值已超过1.7万亿美元。他们直接雇佣了超过300万员工，人数最高至沃尔玛（Wal-Mart）的210万员工，最低至Facebook的区区3,000多人。

    但这些数字还只是表面现象。每家公司都是一个蓬勃发展的生态体系的核心，滋养了其他公司，数量没有几百家，也有几十家。很多小公司是这些大公司的供货商，并借此获得了长足发展。比如全食超市公司（Whole Foods）就向当地2,000多家农场购买农产品等。因此，每家公司的影响力都远远超出了其自身界限。下面是我列出的当代最伟大的12位企业家：

From dreamers to doers

    When Jeff Bezos came up with the idea for what would become Amazon.com, he went on a stroll in Central Park with his boss at the time to share his epiphany.

    Bezos, in 1992, was a senior vice president for the New York hedge fund D.E. Shaw. He described his dream to create a company that would sell books on the Internet. His boss listened intently before offering a bit of advice: "That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn't already have a good job."

    Big ideas of the ground-shifting variety are rare -- and hard to pull off. But that's the difference between the dreamer and the doer. It took Bezos all of 48 hours to decide to quit his job and get started. Some 18 years later, he's still at the helm of Amazon.com, which has redefined the way people buy almost everything, employs 56,200 people, and is valued at more than $80 billion.

    Having spent years studying Bezos and others like him as an author, senior writer, and editor at both Business Week and Fast Company, I can tell you that Bezos is one of those rare birds who have made a meaningful mark on our economy and our world. He would certainly be on anyone's list of the 12 greatest entrepreneurs of my generation. Who else should make that cut? After spending the better part of the past year pondering that question for a new book, World Changers: 25 Entrepreneurs Who Changed Business as We Knew It (Portfolio Penguin), I was asked by Fortune who deserves to be on that list -- and what we can learn from each of them.

    Many are obvious -- from the late Steve Jobs, who helped make Apple the hottest and most valuable company on the planet, to Mark Zuckerberg, who will take Facebook public in what is anticipated to be the biggest IPO of all time (at a value of more than $80 billion). But there will be a few surprises too, such as N.R. Narayana Murthy, the visionary founder of Infosys who has built one of the largest companies in India, helping to transform that economy and put it on the world stage.

    Another surprise: Not a single woman makes the list of the top 12 -- at a time when women have gathered more influence and power in business than ever before. Oprah Winfrey has leveraged her celebrity into a formidable media empire, and the late Body Shop founder Anita Roddick proved that you could market products by being socially and environmentally responsible. They clearly warrant honorable mention but have not, in my view, transformed the face of business or society in as profound a way as those singled out here.

    Admittedly this list of the world's greatest entrepreneurs is subjective. I based it largely on social and economic impact; the world-changing vision of a founder who has inspired employees and other entrepreneurs alike; a record of innovation; and the actual performance of their companies over time. These founders created and then nurtured healthy, sustainable organizations that now have a combined market value of more than $1.7 trillion. They directly employ more than 3 million people, ranging from a high of 2.1 million at Wal-Mart to just over 3,000 at Facebook.

    Yet those numbers only touch the surface. Each of their companies sits at the nucleus of a thriving ecosystem that has cultivated and nurtured dozens if not hundreds of other enterprises. Small companies have thrived as suppliers, for example, to Whole Foods, which, among other things, buys produce from more than 2,000 local farms. So the power of each of these organizations extends far beyond its own walls. Here are my choices:

1. 史蒂夫•乔布斯

公司名称：苹果公司

销售额：1,082亿美元

市值：5,460亿美元

员工人数：63,300

建议：拒绝小组座谈会和市场调研。

    尽管史蒂夫•乔布斯在对待那些全身心为他工作的人时有点不顾情面，苛刻至极，但他仍是我们这个时代企业家的标杆。他深具远见，鼓舞人心，才华横溢，却又反复无常。

    或许，关于乔布斯最让人惊异的事实是，他认为市场调研和小组座谈会只会限制人的创新能力。当被问到苹果公司推出iPad之前进行了多少市场研究时，乔布斯的著名回答是：“完全没做过。消费者们没义务知道他们想要什么。如果消费者从来没有见过哪怕有一点点近似的东西，很难（让他们）告诉你他们到底想要什么。”

    事实上，真正让苹果公司如此与众不同的是乔布斯的直觉，他有着雷达一样敏锐的感觉，能够感知新兴科技及其结合有望产生的“伟大至极”产品。对于去年于56岁英年早逝的乔布斯而言，直觉绝非本能。它是“连点成线”，正如他在斯坦福大学（Stanford）毕业典礼演讲中所述，这段经常被人引用的话闪现了互异的人生经历和科技变革之间的关系。

    完全可以想见，如果乔布斯高度依赖消费者研究，就不会有苹果公司后来的热卖产品，从麦金塔电脑（Macintosh）到iPod，再到iTunes。

    凑巧的是，乔布斯推出麦金塔电脑当天，《大众科学》（Popular Science）的一位记者曾经问他，苹果公司进行了怎样的市场研究、确保这款电脑有市场。乔布斯以近乎生气的语调反问：“亚历山大•格雷汉姆•贝尔发明电话机前做过市场调研吗？”

1. Steve Jobs

Company:Apple

Sales: $108.2 billion

Market Value: $546 billion

Employees: 63,300

Advice: Say no to focus groups and market research.

    Though he could be abusive and mean-spirited to people who threw themselves into their work on his behalf, Steve Jobs has been our generation's quintessential entrepreneur. Visionary. Inspiring. Brilliant. Mercurial.

    Perhaps the most astonishing fact about Jobs was his view that market research and focus groups only limited your ability to innovate. Asked how much research was done to guide Apple when he introduced the iPad, Jobs famously quipped, "None. It isn't the consumers' job to know what they want. It's hard for [consumers] to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it."

    Instead, it was Jobs' own intuition, his radar-like feel for emerging technologies and how they could be brought together to create, in his words, "insanely great" products, that ultimately made the difference. For Jobs, who died last year at 56, intuition was no mere gut call. It was, as he put it in his often-quoted commencement speech at Stanford, about "connecting the dots," glimpsing the relationships among wildly disparate life experiences and changes in technology.

    It's a safe bet to assume that none of Apple's blockbuster products, from the Macintosh to the iPod and iTunes, from the iPhone to the iPad, would have come about if Jobs had relied heavily on consumer research.

    Fittingly enough, on the day Jobs launched the Macintosh, a reporter from Popular Science asked him what type of studies Apple had conducted to ensure there was a market for the computer. In a nearly offended tone, Jobs retorted, "Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?"

2. 比尔•盖茨

公司名称：微软

销售额: 699亿美元

市值：2,735亿美元

员工人数：90,000

建议：找到最聪明的人，组建小型团队

    比尔•盖茨是极少数能有机会在一生中两次改变世界的企业家：第一次，作为全球最具影响力的技术怪才，他帮助推动了个人电脑革命。如今，他作为全球最慷慨的慈善家，正在积极应对全球医疗卫生和公共教育这两大长期挑战。

    如果说盖茨过去领导微软（Microsoft）和如今作为联席主席领导比尔和梅琳达•盖茨基金会（Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation）有何相似之处，那就是都注重聘请最聪明的人，用小型团队来解决重大问题。“别无选择，”他说。“挑选编程员时，必须选高智商的人。”

    有一次被问到他最出色的商业决定是什么时，盖茨不假思索地回答，归根结底是选人。“选择和保罗•艾伦共同创业或许是最明智的决定，其次是聘请了朋友史蒂夫•鲍尔默（接替盖茨担任微软首席执行官一职）。拥有一些完全信赖的人非常重要，他们全力以赴，与你有共同的愿景，但具备的技能又略有不同，因此在某种程度上对你也是一种约束。”

    56岁的盖茨谈到鲍尔默时称：“你和他讲一些想法，他会说，‘嗨，等等。你想过这样或那样吗？’和一个这么聪明的人交谈，好处是它不仅会让生意变得更有意思，而且真地会带来巨大的成功。”

2. Bill Gates

Company: Microsoft

Sales: $69.9 billion

Market Value: $273.5 billion

Employees: 90,000

Advice: Find very smart people and create small teams.

    Bill Gates is one of the very few extraordinary entrepreneurs who have had the opportunity to change the world twice in one lifetime: First, as the world's most influential geek, he helped usher in the personal computer revolution. Now he is tackling the stubbornly difficult challenges of global health and public education as the world's most generous philanthropist.

    If there is a similarity between how he led Microsoft and how he is leading the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as its co-chair, it's a focus on hiring very smart people and putting them to work in small teams to solve big issues. "There is no way of getting around that," he has said. "In terms of IQ, you've got to be very elitist in picking the people who deserve to write software."

    Once asked what his best business decision was, Gates replied without hesitation that it came down to picking people. "Deciding to go into business with Paul Allen is probably at the top of the list, and subsequently hiring a friend, Steve Ballmer [Gates' successor as CEO at Microsoft]. It's important to have someone who you totally trust, who is totally committed, who shares your vision, yet who has a little bit different set of skills and who also acts as something of a check on you."

    Says the 56-year-old Gates about Ballmer: "Some of the ideas you run by him, you know he's going to say, `Hey, wait a minute. Have you thought about this or that?' The benefit of speaking off somebody who's got that kind of brilliance is that it not only makes business more fun, but it really leads to a lot of success."

3. 弗雷德•史密斯

公司名称：联邦快递

销售额：393亿美元

市值：300亿美元

员工人数：255,573

建议：依赖“第一级”经理

    据称弗雷德•史密斯是在耶鲁大学（Yale University）某堂课的学期论文中首次提出联邦快递（Federal Express）的设想，但最终让史密斯瞥见未来的却是他在越南战争（the Vietnam War）期间的经历。1967年到1969年之间，他两次被派驻海外服役，第一次是美国海军陆战队的步枪排排长，第二次是航空管制官。

    这两段经历对他产生了深远影响。首先，史密斯得以近距离地看到了军队物流的惊人效率，有效运输超过50万人的军队和几百万吨物资。纪律、训练和管理经验在这位海军陆战队排长身上留下了深深的烙印。“人们问我，自多年前我创立联邦快递以来一直是什么原则在指导着我，”他说。“我的回答往往让他们感到吃惊：就是我在越南服役期间从美国海军陆战队学到的管理原则。”

    海军陆战队里的陆地部队和航空部队经常会在一起。“用登陆艇上岸时，不会携带大炮，因此海军陆战队发明了近距离空中支援，将军械大炮等辎重空投到附近地点。我把联邦快递也打造成了一体化的陆空体系。它有自己的地面接送和运输业务，与轴幅式航空业务合为一体。”

    史密斯的管理手册很多都取自其海军陆战队经验。“我们告诉管理人员，成功的关键是依赖第一级经理（相当于军队里的无官衔军官），要求他们以身作则，公开表扬表现出色的人。所有这些都是海军陆战队的标准做法。”

    最终，67岁的史密斯帮助很多小企业实现了过去只有大公司才能达到的客户广度。它不仅是联邦快递的革命性创新，也是宏观层面上企业界的革命性创新。

3. Fred Smith

Company:FedEx

Sales: $39.3 billion

Market Value: $30 billion

Employees: 255,573

Advice: Rely on "first-level" managers.

    Despite the story that Fred Smith came up with the idea for Federal Express in a term paper for a Yale University class, it was this entrepreneur's experience during the Vietnam War that really allowed Smith to glimpse the future. From 1967 through 1969 he served two tours of duty, first as a rifle platoon leader in the U.S. Marines and later as an air controller.

    It was a profoundly formative experience. For one thing, Smith got to see up close the awe-inspiring logistical efforts of the military, effectively mobilizing more than half-a-million troops and millions of tons of supplies. The discipline, training, and leadership experience would stick with the Marine captain. "When people ask me what principles have guided me since I started FedEx Corp. years ago," he says, "my answer often startles them: It's the leadership tenets that I learned in the U.S. Marine Corps during my service in Vietnam."

    In the Marine Corps it was not heretical to have ground and air groups together. "When you come ashore in landing boats, you don't have any artillery, so the Marine Corps is the branch of the service that actually invented close air support, dropping ordnance close to you. So I made Federal Express an integrated air-ground system. It had its own pickup and delivery operations on the ground that were integral to the hub-and-spoke air operation."

    Smith's leadership handbook draws heavily upon his Marines experience. "We tell our executives that the key to their success is to rely on their first-level managers [the company's counterparts to noncommissioned officers], to set an example themselves, and to praise in public when someone has done a good job. All those are standard operating procedure in the Marines."

    Ultimately Smith, 67, gave many small businesses the customer reach that had long been the province of far larger companies. It was a game-changing innovation for FedEx, but also for the broader entrepreneurial economy.

4. 杰夫•贝索斯

公司名称：亚马逊

市值：840亿美元

销售额：481亿美元

员工人数：56,200

建议：定期进行短期静修

    置老板的建议于不顾，放弃了纽约的工作，杰夫•贝索斯驱车横跨整个美国来到西雅图，看重的是这个城市众多的软件开发人才。1994年，他推出了亚马逊，但这家电子商务公司直到六年多后才实现首个季度盈利。

    当年他不着急，如今更不急于为提高利润而牺牲建设“一家重要而持久的公司”。多年来，贝索斯一直没有理会华尔街要求其“注重公司利润，而不是营收增长和客户服务”的呼声。

    领导一家备受关注的高成长公司可能千头万绪。最大的一个问题是：何时主动出击，不再消极被动。贝索斯每个季度末都会离开一段时间来解决这个问题。他的独处效果不错，带来了一些新的设想和产品，包括亚马逊面向第三方销售商的运营中心。正如他自己所说：“我把自己关起来。没有来自办公室的干扰。没有电话铃声。就是这一点点独处，然后我发现自己变得更有创造力了。在这两、三天内，我确实会花很多时间上网，只是看看科技爱好者们和黑客们在做些什么。哪些东西处于行业前沿？

    然后，48岁的贝索斯会写下2-3页的备忘录，有时给自己，有时给管理团队。“我发现等这个过程结束时，我并不是很肯定自己创造出了什么，因为它的起点在这里，终点却跳到另一件事。这就像和一堆聪明人聊天。有人说，‘哦，这行不通，因为你忘了x、y和z。’然后，你退后一步，意识到的确如此，然后再进行调整和拓展。”

4. Jeff Bezos

Company: Amazon

Market Value: $84.0 billion

Sales: $48.1 billion

Employees: 56,200

Advice: Take regular mini-retreats.

    After ignoring his boss' advice and quitting his job in New York, Jeff Bezos drove across the country to Seattle, drawn by the city's large population of software developers. Once he launched Amazon in 1994, it took the e-commerce company more than six years to report its first quarterly profit.

    He was in no hurry then and he is in no hurry now to boost profits at the expense of building "an important and lasting company." Bezos has long resisted entreaties from an often frustrated Wall Street to manage his company for profit instead of revenue growth and customer service.

    Leading a closely watched, high-growth company can be frenetic. One of the biggest problems: finding the time to be pro-active rather than reactive. But Bezos, at the end of each quarter, solves this by just going away. His solo retreats have been put to good effect, resulting in several new ideas and products, including Amazon's fulfillment center for third-party sellers. As he has explained it, "I just lock myself up. There are no distractions from the office. No phones ringing. It's just because with a little bit of isolation I find I start to get more creative. I do spend a lot of time web surfing during those two or three days and just looking at what hobbyists and hackers are doing. What are the sorts of things that are on the cutting edge?"

    Bezos, 48, will then write up two- or three-page memos, sometimes to himself, other times to his executive team. "What I find is, by the time that process is done, I'm never really sure if I invented something or not, because it starts here and ends up there. That's what you want if you have a bunch of smart people. Somebody says, `Well, that will never work because you forgot x, y, and z.' And then you step back and recognize that's true and then it morphs and builds."

5. 拉里•佩奇和谢尔盖•布林

公司名称：谷歌

销售额：379亿美元

市值：2,032亿美元

员工人数：32,500

建议：创新不计成本

    保罗•麦卡特尼自称曾梦到《Yesterday》（这首唱片史上被翻唱最多的歌曲之一）的曲调。无独有偶，拉里•佩奇也记得1996年的那个夜晚，当时他才23岁，真真切切地梦到将整个网络下载到了电脑中。“我抓起一支笔，开始写下来，”谷歌共同创始人兼首席执行官佩奇称。“我半夜里爬起来写下了细节，自信这个点子行得通。”

    当然行得通了。2011年第四季度，谷歌（Google）的季度营收首次突破100亿美元。每天全世界使用谷歌搜索的次数达到了惊人的25亿次。但在所有这些令人惊异的数据中，不得不提的或许是谷歌的无处不在。还有一项数据可能更能说明问题：39岁的佩奇和共同创始人38岁的谢尔盖•布林过去三年的研发投入总计达到了118亿美元。

    如此巨大的投入推动了无以伦比的创新，使得谷歌在搜索引擎领域遥遥领先。公司规模不断扩大的同时如何保持创新，这往往是所有成长型公司最难逾越的障碍。对于去年成为首席执行官的佩奇而言，这可以归结为他们所谓的70-20-10法则。

    “大约70%的人从事公司核心业务，”布林解释称。“约20%的人从事邻近领域和业务扩张，10%的人做其他任何事情。随着我们产品宽度的日益拓展，那10%越来越难找到。但我相信这很重要——让人们保持创造力，跳出条条框框。”

5. Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Company: Google

Sales: $37.9 billion

Market Value: $203.2 billion

Employees: 32,500

Advice: Spare no expense on innovation.

    Just like Paul McCartney, who says he literally dreamed the melody to "Yesterday," one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music, Larry Page recalls the night in 1996 when he was 23 years old and had vividly dreamed about downloading the entire web onto computers. "I grabbed a pen and started writing," says Google co-founder and CEO Page. "I spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work."

    It certainly did. For the first time ever, in the final three months of 2011, Google exceeded $10 billion in quarterly revenue. Every day people around the world now use Google for an astounding 2.5 billion searches. But in all the gee-whiz statistics one could cite about the ubiquity of the company on the web, one statistic is even more telling: Page, 39, and co-founder Sergey Brin, 38, have spent $11.8 billion on research and development in the past three years.

    That money fuels an innovation machine second to none, one that has moved Google well beyond its dominating lead in the search engine business. Staying innovative while scaling into a behemoth organization is often the most difficult passage for any growth company. For Page, who became CEO last year, and Brin, it comes down to what they call the 70-20-10 rule.

    "About 70% try to work on the core efforts of the company," explains Brin, "about 20% goes to adjacent areas and expansion, and for the 10%, anything goes. As we have expanded our breadth of offerings, it's actually harder and harder to find the 10% out there. But I think that's important -- to let people be really creative and think outside the box."

6. 霍华德•舒尔茨

公司名称：星巴克

销售额：117亿美元

市值：400亿美元

员工人数：149,000

建议：不断挑战传统。

    这次经济衰退最困难的时期，很多分析师和媒体专家都认为星巴克（Starbucks）成了消费习惯改变的牺牲品。阔别星巴克八年后、2008年初再次出任首席执行官的霍华德•舒尔茨对此却并不认同。

    舒尔茨重返星巴克的时候，公司的利润和营收都在下降。股价跌得非常厉害，以至于他都担心公司可能会被收购。当时，星巴克早已是一个超越自有消费人群的品牌。舒尔茨的做法是企业创始人很少会做，但所有伟大的企业家常常要做的：他给星巴克带来了财务纪律、盈利效率以及返璞归真。

    增长和成功掩盖了很多错误，导致了巨大的浪费。例如，这家全球最大的印度茶拿铁供应商当时每年光是将多出来的蒸牛奶倒入下水道这一项就要浪费几千万美元。在牛奶壶内放一个锯齿状内环，帮助调咖啡者掌握一杯拿铁应使用多少牛奶，星巴克就省下了几百万美元。“谁也不会觉得一个牛奶壶有啥稀奇，”舒尔茨说。“但在星巴克，它非常重要。”

    正如史蒂夫•乔布斯之于苹果公司，霍华德•舒尔茨的二度出山拯救了星巴克，使它摆脱了流于平庸的命运。而且，重振这个标志性品牌的同时，58岁的舒尔茨也做到了大多数创始人都难以做到的事情：挑战传统。

6. Howard Schultz

Company: Starbucks

Sales: $11.7 billion

Market Value: $40 billion

Employees: 149,000

Advice: Always challenge the old ways.

    In the darkest days of the Great Recession, many analysts and media pundits had written off Starbucks as an overreaching victim of changing consumer habits. Howard Schultz, who regained his job as CEO in early 2008 after an eight-year hiatus, would have none of it.

    When he returned, Starbucks' profits and revenues were tanking. The stock price had fallen so severely that at one point he feared the company could be taken over. Starbucks had become a brand that had been stretched beyond its demography. But Schultz did what few builders of companies are known to do -- but what all of the greatest entrepreneurs always do: He brought financial discipline, bottom-line efficiency, and a back-to-basics focus to the company.

    Growth and success had covered up a lot of mistakes and led to a tremendous amount of waste. The world's dominant purveyor of chai lattes, for example, had been losing tens of millions of dollars a year by pouring excess steamed milk down the drain. By simply putting a serrated internal ring inside a pitcher to guide how much milk a barista should use for a latte, Starbucks saved millions. "You wouldn't think a steaming pitcher could be sexy," says Schultz. "But it became very sexy at Starbucks."

    As with Steve Jobs at Apple, the second coming of Howard Schultz saved Starbucks from being just another also-ran. And in turning around an iconic brand, Schultz, now 58, demonstrated that he could do what most founders are said not to do: challenge the old way of doing things.

7. 马克•扎克伯格

公司名称：Facebook

销售额：37.1亿美元

市值：750亿–1,000亿美元 (估计值)

员工人数：3,200

建议: 信奉偏执。

    等到今年5月马克•扎克伯格庆祝28岁生日时，Facebook很可能已经上市，成为历史上规模最大的IPO。外界期待已久的这次上市活动将造就数百位百万富翁和一家估值近1,000亿美元的网络公司，而这位当年从哈佛大学（Harvard University）辍学的科技奇才也将成为同龄人中新一代的比尔•盖茨。

    然而，这一切距离扎克伯格当初在哈佛大学宿舍里推出这个社交网站的时间仅仅只有短短八年。人们很容易将他的成功归结于运气和时机。那就大错特错了。帮助Facebook成为全球第一社交网站的是一个偏执的创业天才，他从硅谷另一位传奇人物、英特尔（Intel）的安迪•格鲁夫身上汲取了灵感。众所周知，格鲁夫常常宣称的：“只有偏执狂才能生存”，而且他一直在用生命实践这个箴言。

    扎克伯格是当今硅谷最偏执的企业家，事事绝不想当然。正是由于这个原因，他才得以不断推动Facebook平台的创新和调整，降低开发人员为这个网络社区编写应用软件的门槛，同时确保每个新版本都领先于竞争对手。Facebook迄今为止还没有在社交领域遭遇任何严重的挑战，甚至行业巨头谷歌去年发起的挑战也不例外，而唯一最重要的原因也正在于此。

7. Mark Zuckerberg

Company: Facebook

Sales: $3.71 billion

MarketValue: $75 billion-$100 billion (estimate)

Employees: 3,200

Advice: Embrace paranoia.

    By the time Mark Zuckerberg celebrates his 28th birthday this May, Facebook will in all likelihood have gone public and become the biggest IPO of all time. The long-anticipated event will create hundreds of millionaires, result in a valuation of an Internet company that will approach $100 billion, and make the geek who dropped out of Harvard University his generation's Bill Gates.

    Yet it has been only eight years since the social-networking site was launched from Zuckerberg's dorm room at Harvard. It would be easy to chalk a good bit of his success to luck and timing. But that would be a serious mistake. What's helped make Facebook the world's dominant social network is an obsessive entrepreneurial genius who has taken a page from another of Silicon Valley's legendary denizens, Intel's Andy Grove, who famously stated -- and lived by -- the dictum that only the paranoid survive.

    Zuckerberg is the Valley's most paranoid entrepreneur these days, taking nothing for granted. It's why he has pushed out a constant flow of innovative changes to Facebook's platform, making it easier for developers to create applications for the community and ensuring that each new iteration keeps it ahead of the competition. It's the single most important explanation for why Facebook has yet to face any formidable rival in its space, including last year's challenge from heavyweight Google.

8. 约翰•麦基

公司名称：全食食品超市公司

销售额: 101亿美元

市值：155亿美元

员工人数：56,200

建议：以崇高的目标激励人

    1978年，约翰•麦基和他当时的女友蕾妮•劳森在奥斯汀一间维多利亚式的老房子里开了第一家素食食品店。他们当时并没有什么野心：目的不过是养家糊口，过得开心，帮助一些人吃得更好一些、生活得更健康一些。这一年，络腮胡子、头发蓬乱的大学辍学生麦基刚刚25岁，认为利润只是 “必要之恶”。

    弹指一挥间：如今全市食品超市（Whole Foods Market）已拥有超过300家超市和56,000名员工 (或“团队成员”)。这家高端食品零售商的成功已改变了业内许多主流竞争对手的经营方式。如今已经58岁的麦基说：“如果20年前你告诉我，沃尔玛（Wal-Mart）将成为全球领先的有机食品销售商之一，我会觉得太荒唐可笑了。”

    他是怎么做的？全食食品秉承的六大宗旨包括承诺销售最优质的天然有机产品，让客户满意和高兴，弘扬环保精神，等等。很多公司的使命宣言也充斥着崇高的字眼，但基本上只是空洞的口号而已。

8. John Mackey

Company:Whole Foods

Sales: $10.1 billion

Market Value: $15.5 billion

Employees: 56,200

Advice: Purpose inspires people.

    In 1978, John Mackey and his then-girlfriend Renee Lawson opened their first vegetarian food store in an old Victorian home in Austin. They had modest ambitions: to make a living, have fun, and help a few people live healthier by eating better. A bearded, shaggy-haired college dropout, Mackey had just turned 25 and thought profit was little more than a "necessary evil."

    Fast forward: Whole Foods Market now has more than 300 supermarkets and over 56,000 employees (or "team members"). The success of the upscale food retailer has changed the way many of the industry's mainstream competitors operate. "If you told me 20 years ago that Wal-Mart would be one of the leading sellers of organic foods in the world, I would have thought that was ridiculous," the 58-year-old Mackey says.

    How does he do it? Among the six fundamental precepts that are at the core of Whole Foods are a commitment to sell the highest-quality natural and organic products available, satisfy and delight the customers, and promote environmental stewardship. Many companies have mission statements with lofty principles that are little more than wall hangings.

9. 赫伯•凯利赫

公司名称：西南航空

销售额：156亿美元

市值：64亿美元

员工人数：45,392

建议：顾客第一

    赫伯•凯利赫在卫斯连大学（Wesleyan University）学习英语专业时进行了能力倾向测试，结果被告知他最适合做三类职业：记者、编辑或律师。凯利赫选择了律师，这个选择不错。后来西南航空（Southwest Airlines）经过五年的漫长诉讼才摆脱了竞争对手的缠斗，并于1971年6月正式起飞。

    2011年，西南航空在这个亏损累累的行业中连续第39年实现盈利，在美国航空业内无人能及。而且，81岁的凯利赫证明低票价仍能取得可观的利润。西南航空不仅是美国最大的国内航空公司，而且据一位经济学家称，它在美国低成本航空市场的份额高达90%。

    凯利赫是怎么做到这一点的？他把成本压得格外低，但仍然保证高品质的客户服务，而做到这两点都有赖于他打造了一种尊重员工的企业文化。他和沃尔玛的山姆•沃尔顿一样，深知一线员工可以载舟，也可以覆舟。凯利赫通过利润分享计划和股票期权让员工们有了当家作主的感觉，愿意全心全意地付出。正是这一点让西南航空在业内卓尔不群。

    有一次他告诉一位采访者：“多年以前，商学院还称之为难题。他们会问：‘员工、股东和顾客？哪个最重要？’这根本不是什么难题。顾客当然排在第一位。如果善待员工，猜猜会有什么结果？顾客会变成老主顾，股东们自然开心。从员工开始，其他一切都会水到渠成。”

9. Herb Kelleher

Company: Southwest Airlines

Sales: $15.6 billion

Market Value: $6.4 billion

Employees: 45,392

Advice: Make your customers No. 1.

    When Herb Kelleher took an aptitude test at Wesleyan University, where he majored in English, he was told that there were three things he was best suited for: working as a journalist, an editor, or a lawyer. Kelleher chose law, and it was a good thing. It would take five long years of often tortuous litigation by competitors to get Southwest Airlines out of court and into the air in June 1971.

    In an industry plagued by vast amounts of red ink, Southwest marked its 39th consecutive year of profitability in 2011, a feat unmatched in U.S. aviation history. What's more, Kelleher, 81, proved that you could still charge low fares and be nicely profitable. Southwest is not only the largest U.S. domestic airline but also responsible, as one economist noted, for 90% of the low-fare airline business that exists in America.

    How did Kelleher do it? He kept costs extraordinarily low and customer service high -- and he did both by creating a culture that respected the people he carefully hired. Like Sam Walton, he understood that front-line personnel can either make you or break you. And Kelleher got his people to sign on to the program through profit-sharing plans and stock options that made employees feel and act like owners. It separated Southwest from the pack.

    "Years ago," he once told an interviewer, "the business schools used to pose it as a conundrum. They would say, `Well, who comes first? Your employees, your shareholders, or your customers?' But it's not a conundrum. Your customers come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your shareholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows from that."

10. 纳拉雅纳•穆尔蒂

公司名称：印孚瑟斯

销售额：60亿美元

市值：320亿美元

员工人数：145,088

建议: 今天的付出会换来明天的回报

    1974年，28岁的纳拉雅纳•穆尔蒂是一位政治左倾的工程师。那年，在从法国回印度的火车上，他和一位乘客聊起了“住在一个铁幕国家的痛苦”。他说：“我们的谈话被一帮警察打断了，后来我推断这些警察是一个年轻人召来的，他认为我们正在批评保加利亚的共产党政府。”

    穆尔蒂被拖出车厢，关在一间没有食品和水的小房间里长达72小时后，之后又被扔上另一辆出站的火车上，最后才在伊斯坦布尔获释。这段经历令穆尔蒂对左翼不再抱有任何好感，也最终帮助他成为了印度、乃至全球最成功的资本家之一。他意识到如果他想成为一个改革派，那必须是在一个与共产主义格格不入的系统中。

    他证明了印度可以承担起传统上是西方国家后花园的软件开发工作，与全球展开竞争。穆尔蒂是印孚瑟斯（Infosys）的六位共同创始人之一，担任公司的首席执行官长达21年，帮助推动了外包革命，为印度经济带来了几十亿美元的财富，并将这个国家变成了全球的后台支持部。

    他的重要经验：一个从零起步的组织必须要有一个经得起考验的价值体系，能聚拢一批人。“那就是今天的付出终将成就明天的回报，”现年65岁、仍担任着名誉董事长一职的穆尔蒂解释称。“它意味着全心付出，努力工作，挫折失意，远离家人，而唯一的希望就是，未来的某一天终将获得足够的回报。”

10. Narayana Murthy

Company: Infosys

Sales: $6.0 billion

Market Value: $32 billion

Employees: 145,088

Advice: Sacrifice today, cash in tomorrow.

    In 1974, Narayana Murthy was a 28-year-old politically left-leaning engineer on his way home to India from France. During his journey on a train, he struck up a conversation with one of the passengers "about the travails of living in an Iron Curtain country." He says: "We were interrupted by some policemen who, I later gathered, were summoned by a young man who thought we were criticizing the Communist government of Bulgaria."

    Murthy was dragged out of the train and left in a small room without food or water for 72 hours, then thrown back on another departing train and released in Istanbul. His treatment purged Murthy of any affinity he had for the left and would ultimately help make him one of India's and the world's most successful capitalists. If he was to be a reformer, he realized, it would have to be through a system that was rejected by the Communists.

    He proved that India could compete with the world by taking on the software development work that had long been the province of the West. As one of six co-founders of Infosys and the CEO for 21 years, Murthy helped spark the outsourcing revolution that has brought billions of dollars in wealth into the Indian economy and transformed his country into the world's back office.

    His important lesson: An organization starting from scratch must coalesce around a team of people with an enduring value system. "It is all about sacrifice today, fulfillment tomorrow," explains Murthy, 65, who is now chairman emeritus. "It is all about sacrifice, hard work, lots of frustration, being away from your family, in the hope that someday you will get adequate returns from that."

11. 山姆•沃尔顿

公司名称：沃尔玛

销售额:4,469亿美元

市值：365亿美元

员工人数：200万

建议：给人们想要的。

    1984年，66岁的山姆•沃尔顿穿上草裙，在华尔街跳起了草裙舞。这滑稽的一幕是他输掉一场赌局后的代价。他与首席执行官戴维•格拉斯打赌，赌沃尔玛（Wal-Mart Stores）的利润率，结果输了。

    “大多数人当时可能都认为，不过是个可笑的董事长，耍些老套的公关噱头而已，”后来沃尔顿在自传中写道【《富甲美国（零售大王沃尔顿自传）》（Sam Walton: Made in America），由时代公司（Time Inc.）总编约翰•休伊共同撰写】。“他们并不知道，这种事情每天都在沃尔玛上演。”

    是的，这类事情，包括努力工作以及（不管你信不信）创新。1992年去世（卒年74岁）的沃尔顿自开设第一家沃尔玛商店三十年后，沃尔玛成为了美国历史上最成功的零售商，究其原因是他给零售业带来了效率和纪律，而且在这方面总是遥遥领先于竞争对手。

    沃尔玛成功的基石归根结底是以尽可能低的价格出售商品。沃尔顿取消中间环节，直接与制造商讨价还价，尽量降低进货成本，因此才做到了这一点。“低价进货，大量铺货，廉价销售”的想法成为了一个可持续的业务模式，很大程度上是因为在戴维•格拉斯（沃尔顿后来的接班人）的要求下，沃尔顿大举投资软件，依靠沃尔玛收银台的条形码扫描实现了对消费行为的实时追踪。

    他将这些实时数据与供应商分享，建立了合作关系，使得沃尔玛能在一定程度上敦促制造商提高生产效率。随着沃尔玛的影响力扩大，它几乎可以决定很多供应商产品的价格、产量、交付、包装和质量等因素。结果：沃尔顿颠覆了供应商-零售商的关系。

11. Sam Walton

Company: Wal-Mart Stores

Sales: $446.9 billion

Market Value:$36.5 billion

Employees: 2.0 million

Advice: Give the people what they want.

    In 1984, a 66-year-old Sam Walton put on a grass skirt and did the hula dance on Wall Street. His wacky performance was in the service of a lost bet over Wal-Mart's profit margins with his chief lieutenant, David Glass.

    "Most folks probably thought we just had a wacky chairman who was pulling a pretty primitive publicity stunt," Walton would later write in his biography (Sam Walton: Made in America, coauthored by Time Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey). "What they didn't realize is that this sort of stuff goes on all the time at Wal-Mart."

    Well, that stuff, a whole lot of hard work, and, believe it or not, innovation. The reason Walton, who died at 74 in 1992, 30 years after opening his first Wal-Mart store, was the most successful retailer in American history is that he also was way ahead of his competitors in bringing efficiencies and discipline to the world of retailing.

    The cornerstone of his company's success ultimately lay in selling goods at the lowest possible price, something he was able to do by pushing aside the middlemen and directly haggling with manufacturers to bring costs down. The idea to "buy it low, stack it high, and sell it cheap" became a sustainable business model largely because Walton, at the behest of David Glass, his eventual successor, heavily invested in software that could track consumer behavior in real time from the bar codes read at Wal-Mart's checkout counters.

    He shared the real-time data with suppliers to create partnerships that allowed Wal-Mart to exert significant pressure on manufacturers to improve their productivity and become ever more efficient. As Wal-Mart's influence grew, so did its power to nearly dictate the price, volume, delivery, packaging, and quality of many of its suppliers' products. The upshot: Walton flipped the supplier-retailer relationship upside down.

12. 默罕穆德•尤努斯

公司名称：Grameen Bank

建议：小馈赠，大影响

    70年代初，默罕穆德•尤努斯在孟加拉国一所大学的教室里教授经济理论。但在吉大港大学（Chittagong University）的校园外，他看到的是极度的饥饿和贫困。他热切地希望能为当地民众做点什么，由此引发了一个简单但极具影响的举动：尤努斯为吉大港大学附近一所村庄中赤贫的编篮匠人提供了一笔27美元的借款。

    他无法相信这一小笔钱所产生的兴奋和激动。对于每日生活支出仅几美分的人们，几美元就可以改变他们的人生——很多时候确实如此。这笔钱用于支持和发展那些极微型企业，最终帮助很多人摆脱了贫困。更让尤努斯意外的是，编篮匠人最终还了钱——而且是按时还款。后来，他从一个村庄到另一个村庄，寻找所有需要融资的创业项目。

    直到1983年，尤努斯才成立了Grameen Bank银行，帮助倡导、传播微型贷款概念。到2006年尤努斯获得诺贝尔和平奖时，Grameen Bank已向孟加拉7.3万个村庄的近700万人发放了贷款。更重要的是，71岁的尤努斯帮助推动了全球性的微型贷款运动。Grameen模式推广到了全球100多个国家，帮助了数百万人。

    虽然这家银行无法根除贫困，但它改善了很多人的生活。同等重要的是，尤努斯的理念激励了无数的年轻人投身于全球社会事业。

    注：公司销售额和员工人数都摘自公司最近提交的10K或20F表格，市值统计截至2012年3月19日。

    译者：老榆木/早稻米

12. Muhammad Yunus

Company: Grameen Bank

Advice: Small gifts can equal big impacts.

    In the early 1970s Muhammad Yunus was teaching economic theory to students in a university classroom in Bangladesh. But outside the campus of Chittagong University, all he saw was crushing hunger and poverty. His desire to do something to help the local citizens led to a simple but powerful gesture: Yunus loaned $27 to destitute basket weavers in a village next to his university's campus.

    He could not believe the excitement the small amount of money caused. For people living on pennies a day, just a few dollars could transform their lives -- and in many cases it did. The gift was used to support and expand these very small businesses, and that helped many overcome their poverty. Much to Yunus' surprise, the basket weavers actually paid off the loans -- and on time too. He then moved from one village to the next, finding all sorts of entrepreneurial projects to fund.

    It wasn't until 1983 that Yunus founded Grameen Bank, the institution that helped pioneer and spread the concept of microcredit. By the time Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, the Grameen Bank had outstanding loans to nearly 7 million poor people in 73,000 villages in Bangladesh. More important, Yunus, 71, helped create a global movement toward microlending. The Grameen model moved on to more than 100 countries worldwide and helped millions.

    While the bank could not eradicate poverty, it lifted many lives. No less critical, Yunus' idea inspired countless numbers of young people to devote themselves to social causes all over the world.

    Notes: Company revenues and employee numbers taken from the most recent 10K or 20F filed by the company; market value as of 3/19/2012.