【英文版 01】Good Ideas Are Not Enough

大家好，我是你们的导师贝丝·奥特林格（Beth Ames Altringer），我是哈佛大学创新与设计实验室创始人，从事创新与设计领域的研究。欢迎大家和我一起打破固有思维、提升创造力。通过这门课，你们将会获得一整套创意思维，并借助这种思维改变自己的人生。

In 1998, Larry Page and Sergei Brin launchedGoogle, a search engine born out of the mission to organize the world'sinformation and make it universally accessible and useful.

在进入今天的主题之前啊，我想先给大家讲一个故事。在1998年，拉里·佩奇（Larry Page）和谢尔盖·布林（SergeiBrin）共同创立了我们如今所熟知的搜索引擎公司，谷歌（Google）。它整合了全球范围内的所有信息，从此之后，我们每个人都拥有了获取全球信息的机会。

These days, Google has over 90 percent of thesearch engine market worldwide and they receive something like. 3.8 millionsearches per minute. It's hard to imagine a world without Google.

如今，谷歌在搜索引擎市场上已经占有了超过90%的市场份额，它的搜索量，甚至达到了每分钟380万次。现在的我们已经很难想象这个世界如果没有谷歌会是什么样子的了。

However, if you think back to the mid 1990s,you'll likely have memories of searching the Internet without Google. You mighthave used an even earlier search engine, like AltaVista. AltaVista launched in1995, the same year Google's founders Page and Brin were just meeting for thevery first time. AltaVista was the first search engine to use natural languagesearch queries. This new technology meant that anyone could type what they werelooking for in plain language, rather than using complex query strings. Naturallanguage processing made search engines accessible to everyone.

不过，如果你回想一下20世纪90年代中期的情景，你或许还能回忆起没有谷歌的网络搜索时代。那时你可能使用的是更早期的搜索引擎，比如AltaVista。AltaVista是在1995年上市的，而在那一年，谷歌创始人佩奇和布林才第一次见面。AltaVista是第一个支持自然语言搜索的搜索引擎，换句话说啊，就是从那以后，我们所有人都能够通过输入日常语言来进行搜索，而不再需要使用复杂的字符串了，自然语言处理系统让我们每个人都能自由地上网搜索信息了。

When Google finally came along in 1998, theybuilt their product on the ideas and the market validation that AltaVista andother search engines had already proven to be promising. The story of AltaVistaisn't unique. Once you start paying attention to it, this pattern repeatsitself in many product categories. Online shopping, grocery delivery, podcasts,apps, enterprise software. The list goes on. And this story helps us dispel acommon myth about innovation. The myth that teams fail because they don't havegood ideas.

在1998年，谷歌终于成功问世了，谷歌的创始人在创立谷歌时将AltaVista和其他搜索引擎最成功的创意都借鉴了过来，并取得了最终的成功。类似于AltaVista这样的故事其实并不少见，并且如果你注意观察，就会发现这种现象不断地在不同的领域反复出现，从线上购物、外卖，到播客、应用程序以及企业软件，几乎所有的领域都存在这样的现象，一个企业拥有了好点子，但是往往最终的成功却并不是它。我们通常认为，创新团队会失败是因为他们缺乏好的创意，而我今天的讲的这个故事，就是想告诉大家事情并不是这样的。

The core ideas of these companies, like askingquestions in the case of search companies or getting food in the case ofgrocery delivery are still alive today. These core ideas have changed in thepast and they're going to change in the future. But the core idea is notactually new. Placing too much emphasis on the value of a creative idea can distractyou from understanding other important factors that will influence your successas an innovator.

除此之外，我们还可以看到，这些公司的核心创意到今天依然在沿用，比如用户可以通过搜索引擎来搜索自己的疑问，或者用户可以通过点外卖来获得食品。尽管这些核心创意在随着时间不断改变着，和最初的创意有些区别，但他们并不是全新的创意。所以，如果你过分执着于找到一个全新的创意，那么你很可能会忽视其他影响你创意成功的重要因素。

In other words, if you want to be a successfulinnovator, you will need more than a good idea. A good idea by itself is notenough to succeed.

换句话说，如果你希望你的创意成功，你需要的不仅仅是一个好的创意，因为只有一个好点子是远远不足以让你成功的。

Welcome to Designing Innovation, a podcastthat helps you increase your odds of innovation success. I'm your host, BethAmes Altringer. This course can be useful whether you are just interested inwhere good ideas come from. You might have an idea that's been kicking aroundin your mind for a while. You might have a side project that you're spending alot of time on. You might actively be working on an idea or you're working onan idea professionally and trying to push what's possible in your field.

欢迎大家来和我一起学习这门创意思维课，这门课程将会使你的创意更容易获得成功。我是你们的导师贝丝·奥特林格（Beth Ames Altringer）。不论你是对于创意从何而来感到好奇；还是你的脑子里一直有一个跃跃欲试的想法；也可能是你有一个花费了自己许多心血的个人副业；或者是你正在研究一个创意或从事专业的创意工作，并且还想在这个领域中取得更大的成功。无论你处在怎样的阶段，我相信这节课都能让你获益匪浅。

Before starting my design lab at HarvardUniversity and my own creative studio, I worked as a design researcher insidemany of the world's leading creative organizations, including IDEO, therenowned product design and innovation company; J. Walter Thompson, the worldfamous creative agency; Kering, the fashion and lifestylecompany that owns a lot of brands you might have heard of, like Gucci,Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, and other luxuryjewelry and eyewear brands. And the Stanford University Design School, theworld's most prominent place to learn creative confidence and design thinkingfor the purpose of innovation.

首先，我想先做一个自我介绍。在我成立哈佛大学设计实验室并拥有自己的创意工作室之前，我曾在许多世界领先的创意组织担任过设计研究员，包括著名的产品设计和创新公司IDEO，以及全球闻名的广告公司智威汤逊（J. Walter Thompson）；我也曾在开云集团（Kering）担任过设计研究员，这是一个主打时尚和生活方式的公司，它旗下许多品牌你可能都听说过，比如古驰（Gucci）、巴黎世家（Balenciaga）、亚历山大麦昆（Alexander McQueen）、圣罗兰（Saint Laurent）、葆蝶家（Bottega Veneta），以及许多奢侈珠宝和眼镜墨镜品牌；此外，我还在斯坦福大学设计学院（Stanford University Design School）工作过，这个学院可以说是全世界学习创意和设计思维最权威的地方，它的首要宗旨就是指导大家应该怎么去创新的。

Top creative organizations like these seem tohave built innovative capacity directly into their DNA and so we can learn alot from them. They employ talented creatives and they’re leaders at developingprocesses that make innovative teamwork easier to do. At least in theory, thesefamous creative companies should succeed all the time. But in the messy realityof the real world, innovative success is actually pretty elusive, even forteams that have all of the so-called right ingredients and right people andhave already established a great track record. And this is true across manysectors. Depending on the figures that you use, innovation failure happensaround 60 to 90 percent of the time, even in highly successful companies.

这些顶级创意组织似乎拥有与生俱来的创新能力，因此我们也能从他们身上学到许多经验。这些创意组织会聘请那些非常有才华的创意者，并请他们领导整个创意过程，带领团队的创意工作更顺利地开展。从理论上来说，这些著名创意公司应该是不太容易失败的。但事实上，他们同样会遇到许多复杂混乱的状况，即使一个团队已经具备了所有的成功要素以及招募了优秀人才，并且已经拥有了优秀的过往成绩，他们的创新能否成功我们依然难以预料，这在许多领域都是一样的。这里有一组数据可以证明这个判断，不论是在很有创意的大公司还是不知名的小公司，创新工作的失败率都在60%到90%左右，基本上没有差别。

One of the first things that I learned as aresearcher inside of these companies was that although they succeed much moreoften than their competitors, they still fail much more often than they expectthat they will. And there's plenty of room for improvement, even at the top,even in companies like these. We'll revisit these examples often throughout thecourse, usually as exemplars to emulate, and sometimes as cautionary tales toavoid.

当我在这些大公司做研究员时，我学到的第一件事就是，尽管他们的成功率远远高于他们的竞争者，但他们的失败次数也远远超过了我们的想象。这说明，即使是那些顶尖的公司，也无法做到每一次的创意都能成功。我会在接下来的课程中，与大家分享这些公司的案例，它们中的大部分案例能够成为我们学习的范例，同时我们也可以从他们的失败经验中吸取教训。

I don't know about you, but I find itencouraging to hear that the most creative companies in the world still failfrequently. This means that you and I don't have to be perfect to succeed. Andthat's great news. And it means that there are things that we can all learn todo that don't require us to be creative geniuses.

不知道你们感受如何，但是就我来说，当我听说现在大多数创意公司也会经常失败之后，我觉得很受鼓舞。因为这就意味着，像我们这样不够完美的普通人，也是能够获得成功的。这是一个很好的消息，就算我们不是什么创意天才，我们也可以通过不断的学习来获得成功。

We'll start by learning three common andpreventable reasons that many creative ideas fail. I'll explain each of thesethree common pitfalls in detail. In this lesson and in future course lessons,I'll teach you methods to overcome each of these problems.

说了这么多，相信大家已经认识到，创意并不是一种与生俱来的天赋，而是一种可以通过不断练习掌握的技能了。人人都可以拥有创造力，但是，那究竟是什么导致了我们创意的失败呢？

在接下来的课程中，我会给大家介绍三个导致创意失败的因素，这三个因素非常常见，但我们都可以避免。我会为大家详细讲解这三个常见的陷阱，并且教你们一些专业的方法来帮助你们克服这些难题。今天就讲到这里，我们下次课程再见。