Whenever I am on a public panel, I am asked one question more than any other: what is the magic that creates an outstanding entrepreneur?

每当我参加公开研讨会时，最经常被问到的问题是：造就杰出企业家的秘诀是什么？

This week Gallup unveiled some of the findings from new research into this question. It has spent a decade on the project, called the Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder,

最近，盖洛普(Gallup)公布了一些针对这个问题的最新研究结果。该机构用了10年时间致力于这个名为“创业优势发现者”(Entrepreneurial Strengths Finder)的项目，访问了5000人。尽管完整的研究结果今年稍晚才公布，但该机构表示，它已确认极为成功的企业家所具备的10个重要内在特质，分别是：关注商业、充满信心、创造性思维、善于授权、果断坚定、独立、有求知欲、倡导者、善于拓展人脉、敢于冒险。

and interviewed more than 5,000 people. While the full results will be published this year, it says it has identified 10 key innate traits that highly successful entrepreneurs possess and labelled them like this: business focus, confidence, creative thinker, delegator, determination, independent, knowledge-seeker, promoter, relationship-builder and risk-taker.

我们很难质疑这个列表。从某种程度上来说，所有与我共事过的成功企业家都具备上述多数素质。我倾向于用略微不同的词汇来描述他们：例如有理想、外向和自律。另外，我认为，盖洛普忽视了一些关键特质，例如乐观、善于计算、精力充沛以及随机应变。不过，这个列表还是有参考意义的。

It is hard to argue with this list. All the winning entrepreneurs I have worked with have possessed most of the above qualities to some degree. I have tended to use slightly different descriptions – ambition, extroversion and self-discipline, for example. Moreover, I think there are some vital characteristics Gallup has missed, such as optimism, numeracy, high energy and a sense of opportunism. But nevertheless, the list is useful.

遗憾的是，这些成功企业家的“公式”只能到此为止了。不可能每一个取得伟大成就的企业创始人都具备盖洛普所定义的所有优点，同时很多具备这些优点的人从未成为企业家。当然，在为成功企业家列公式方面，盖洛普很难算得上首开先河。我从我的书架上挑出了3本书，每本书都有着自己的一套：乔恩•吉莱斯皮-布朗(Jon Gillespie-Brown)所著的《想当企业家么？》(So You Want to Be an Entrepreneur?)、安东尼•蒂安(Anthony Tjan)、理查德•哈林顿(Richard Harrington)和Tsun-Yan Hsieh最近合著的《激情、智慧、勇气和运气》(Hearts, Smarts, Guts and Luck)，以及艾伦•巴特利特(Alan Bartlett)逾25年前出版的《剖析企业家：狡诈管理学》(Profile of the Entrepreneur, or Machiavellian Management)。每本书都有其各自的优点，都值得研究。我相信，这样的模型还有更多。

Unfortunately, such formulas only go so far. By no means every high- achieving business founder has all Gallup’s defined strengths, and many individuals who possess such strengths never become entrepreneurs. And of course Gallup is hardly the first to devise such a prescription. I picked just three books from my shelf which have their own methodologies: So You Want to Be an Entrepreneur? by Jon Gillespie-Brown, the recent Hearts, Smarts, Guts and Luck by Anthony Tjan, Richard Harrington and Tsun-Yan Hsieh, and Profile of the Entrepreneur, or Machiavellian Management by Alan Bartlett – which was published more than 25 years ago. Each has its merits, and all are worth studying. And I am sure there are more such models.

厘清为何一些企业家会成为大亨，另一些却会破产，这是我一生的任务之一。实际上，对于所有风险投资家而言，这种知识都是他们梦寐以求的“圣杯”。但大脑、行为、基因、环境和机缘以一种不可预测的方式结合，才缔造了伟大的成功，对此无法以科学的准确性进行预测。在投入资金之前，你永远无法真正知晓一个项目是否会失败。

It is one of my missions in life to find out why certain entrepreneurs become tycoons and why others fail. Indeed, such knowledge is the holy grail for every venture capitalist. But the unpredictable blend of brains, behaviour, genes, circumstances and serendipity that delivers a big hit cannot be forecast with scientific accuracy. You never really know before you commit if a project will be a smash.

很多人会事后聪明地宣称，他们总是清楚某笔投资肯定会做大，管理团队注定会取得伟大成就。但这种断言完全是妄想。选出明天的行业巨头与选出未来的奥斯卡(Oscar)或诺贝尔奖(Nobel Prize)得主一样难。市场和竞争无法预测；个人悲剧、政治、科技或文化变迁也是如此——还有其他许多影响因素。

Many claim, with hindsight bias, that they always knew a particular investment was certain to be huge, and that the management team were destined for greatness. But such assertions are delusional. Picking tomorrow’s industrial titans is as hard as choosing the Oscar or Nobel Prize winners of the future. Markets and competition cannot be predicted; nor can personal tragedies, politics, technology or cultural shifts – among the many influencing factors.

我强烈怀疑，绝大多数经济学家回避整个企业家话题的主要原因之一是，这些行为难测的原动者无法轻易被分析，他们的创新也无法轻易被预测。

I strongly suspect one of the principal reasons the vast majority of economists avoid the whole subject of entrepreneurs is because these mercurial prime movers cannot easily be analysed, nor their innovations anticipated.

政策制定者和教育学家也希望能准确测试出创业突破。这样他们就能把政府支持给予正确的团队和行业，并且可能会培养出更多表现优秀的企业家。学校、企业孵化中心、创业加速器、银行和其他机构就能更明智地投入努力。全球所有国家都希望复制硅谷等创业生态系统的经济效应。但没有任何一个地方成功。

Policy makers and educationalists would also like an accurate test for entrepreneurial breakthroughs. Then they could back the right teams and sectors with government support, and possibly cultivate many more high-performing entrepreneurs. Schools, incubators, accelerators, banks and others could direct their efforts more wisely. Every country in the world would love to replicate the economic impact of entrepreneurial ecosystems such as Silicon Valley. But nowhere has.

企业家确实无法归于一类。他们通常有着自然的直觉、务实而且会做出惊人之举。他们的发迹之地会出乎人们的意料。他们的背景各有不同；他们的兴趣千差万别，他们的动机和方法也是各有千秋。作为一个群体，他们不可能被整齐地分门别类。正如电视剧《囚徒》(The Prisoner)中的6号所言：“我不会被逼迫、被归档、被标印、被索引、被概括、被介绍或者被编号。”但对于像我这样的人而言，创业历程的复杂性，以及我们对创业者的心理和分布缺乏理解，是有好处的。这意味着，其中存在缺口：你会时不时地碰到杰出的个人和情境，而所有那些认为创业有着准确法则的专家们都把他们忽视了。正因如此，无休止地寻找下一次大成功是这样令人兴奋。

Entrepreneurs are not really of a type. They are often intuitive, pragmatic and surprising. They emerge from unexpected places. Their backgrounds are varied; their interests diverse, their motives and methods are multifarious. As a cohort they are impossible to categorise neatly. As Number 6 says in the TV drama The Prisoner: “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.” But the complexity of any entrepreneurial journey, and the imperfection of our understanding of their psychology and distribution, has an upside for people like me. It means there are gaps: from time to time one stumbles across remarkable individuals and situations neglected by all those experts who think there are precise rules about entrepreneurship. That is why the endless search for the next Big Thing is so exciting.