经济学人下载:IBM vs 卡耐基基金会

Big-hearted Blue

心胸宽广的蓝巨人IBM

Not until its second quarter-century did IBM count for much. But by its 50th birthday IBM was one of America’s leading firms, earning profits of $254m on revenues of $2.2 billion and employing 116,000 people. Those jobs, as well as profits are in themselves a measure of IBM’s achievement. Because firms sell something that people want, they make the world a better place in ways charities do not. In particular, companies create what is known as “consumer surplus”—the difference between the market price and what a consumer would be willing to pay. This surplus benefits society, not shareholders.

25岁以前的IBM没什么分量。但是当它迎来50岁周年的时候，已经是美国最领先的公司之一，收入为22亿美元，盈利2.54亿美元，旗下有116000名员工。那些工作岗位、利润本身就见证了IBM的成就。因为公司出售人们想要的东西，所以它们以慈善无法做到的方式让世界变得更好。特别是，公司创造出“消费过剩”——市场价格和消费者愿意支付的之间的差异。这种过剩造福的是社会而不是股东。

As well as making an important commercial entry into the public arena, by providing the backbone of a new social-security system introduced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935, IBM also spent a lot of money on research. By 1935 it employed 300 engineers and, Watson reckoned, some 95% of its profits were generated by innovations introduced since 1917. This effort soon expanded through partnerships with universities and embraced pure research as well as the more applied, commercially driven sort. At one extreme, for instance, the benefits to society include the bar code, IBM’s version of which became the standard. The firm also took part in such crucial national initiatives as America’s space programme (a newly installed IBM system helped save the stricken Apollo 13). And at the other extreme it also helped form the minds of such future Nobel laureates as Beno??t Mandelbrot, the pioneer of fractal geometry, and Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, inventors of the scanning tunnelling microscope which let scientists see individual atoms.

IBM是罗斯福1935年采用的新社会保险体系的中流砥柱，借此它踏足公共生活领域，发挥重要的商业作用，它还在研究方面投入大笔金钱。到1935年止，它聘用了300名工程师，沃森估计自1917年开始，其利润的大概95%都是由发明产生的。这种努力很快通过与大学的合作关系扩展开来，既容纳应用性更强的、由商业推动的研究，也包容纯粹的研究。举一个极端的例子，对社会的贡献包括条形码，IBM的条形码后来成为标准。公司还参与一些关键性的国家计划，如美国空间项目（一个新安装的IBM系统帮助挽救了受损的阿波罗13号）。从另一个极端来说，它还帮助培养了未来的诺贝尔得主，如分形几何的先驱伯努瓦??B??曼德尔布罗特（Benoit B．Mandelbrot），还有发明扫描隧道显微镜的格尔德??宾宁（Gerd Binnig）和海因里希??罗勒（Heinrich Rohrer），借助这项发明科学家可以看到单个原子。

IBM, like Carnegie, also did its bit for civil rights. In 1953 Thomas Watson junior, a similarly idealistic soon-to-be successor to his father, threatened to cancel plans for plants in Kentucky and North Carolina if they could not be fully racially integrated. After a stand-off, the state governors backed down, and the plants opened three years later.

IBM，就像卡耐基一样也在人权领域作出自己的贡献。1953年，即将继承其父事业、同父亲一样也是一个理想主义者的小托马斯??沃森（Thomas Watson junior）威胁如果肯塔基州和北卡罗莱纳州不能在人种问题上达到完全的平等旧要取消在这两个州的建厂计划。在经历意见分歧之后，两州州长退步，三年后工厂开张。