美國作爲創新的搖籃還能維持多久?

MY model American entrepreneur of the moment is Cheong Choon Ng. He has not attracted a $3 billion bid from Facebook, like the young inventors of the photo-sharing service Snapchat. Wall Street is not cooking up an I.P.O. But Ng is a star in my household. He is the creator of the Rainbow Loom, which in the middle-schooler market is the hottest device not called iSomething. If you have noticed that half the children in America — and a fair number of adults — seem to be sporting bracelets that are braids of brightly colored rubber bands, then you have seen the fruits of the Rainbow Loom.

在我看來，當下美國創業者的模範是吳昌俊（Cheong Choon Ng，音譯）。他還沒有像照片共享服務Snapchat的年輕創始人那樣，從Facebook那裏收到30億美元（約合183億元人民幣）的收購要約，華爾街也沒有在爲他醞釀首次公開募股，但是在我的家裏，吳昌俊是一個明星。他發明的“彩虹織機”(Rainbow Loom)是美國中小學生市場上最熱門的非蘋果設備。可能你已經注意到，美國一半的兒童，以及相當數量的成年人，手上戴着顏色鮮豔的橡皮筋編制而成的手環，那其實就是用彩虹織機織出來的。

Ng told me he has sold about three million of them, even before cracking the overseas market. Not least among the charms of his simple device is the fact that it unplugs children for a while from the mind-sucking Matrix in favor of projects that require focus and creativity. (In fairness to the Internet, I should note that kids learn new bracelet designs from demonstration videos on YouTube.)

吳昌俊告訴我，甚至在打入海外市場之前，他就已經售出了約300萬臺彩虹織機。他這個簡單的設備富有魅力，其中重要的一點就是可以把孩子們的注意力從令人上癮的網絡世界裏拉出來一段時間，轉移到需要集中精力和發揮創造力的活動上。（我也應該爲網絡說句公道話，孩子們是通過YouTube上的演示視頻學習新的手環設計的。）

The United States may not manufacture as much stuff as it used to, but we are still the world's cradle of innovation. Inventiveness has been an American point of pride dating back to the days when the country was in its infancy. The Atlantic magazine, in one of those exercises that manages to be both arbitrary and fascinating, this month asked a panel of smart people to identify the greatest inventions since the wheel. If you discard breakthroughs made before the United States was up and running, an astonishing number of civilization-altering innovations — 16 of 30 on that list — were born here. Oil drilling. The telegraph. Refrigeration. Anesthesia. Electricity. The airplane. The Pill. The semiconductor. You might say that America itself is something of a civilization-altering innovation.

美國製造的東西可能沒有以往那麼多了，但這裏仍然是全球創新的搖籃。創造力一直是美國引以爲豪的東西，這可以追溯到這個國家創立的初期。《大西洋》(The Atlantic)月刊推出過很多既武斷又吸引人的調查，這個月，它讓一組聰明人列出自車輪之後最偉大的發明。如果不算美國建國之前人類取得的那些突破性發明，大量改變文明進程的創新都出現在這個國家——佔據了名單上30個發明中的16個。石油鑽探、電報、製冷、麻醉、電、飛機、避孕藥、半導體。你可能會說，美國本身就是一個改變文明進程的創新。

Choon Ng is in several respects a case study in how America has kept its edge. He moved here from Malaysia at age 21 to earn a master's degree in engineering from Wichita State University. He hadn't planned on staying, but he was offered a job as a crash-test engineer in the auto industry. The companies he worked for sponsored him for work visas until, after a dozen years, he had negotiated the arduous path to citizenship. Then inspiration struck.

從好幾個方面來看，吳昌俊的經歷都是美國如何保持優勢的一個研究案例。他21歲從馬來西亞來到這裏，在威奇托州立大學(Wichita State University)攻讀工程學碩士學位。吳昌俊本來沒有打算留在美國，但他得到了一份工作，在汽車行業擔任碰撞測試工程師。在他任職公司的擔保下，他拿着工作簽證，直到十幾年後，他才經過艱難的歷程成爲了美國公民。然後，靈感突然降臨。

The loom, originally a wooden tablet with a grid of pushpins, began as an attempt to score dad points with his craft-obsessed daughters. When it was a hit at home, he fashioned a version out of molded plastic, scraped together his savings and loans from his family, and went into business. Eventually he managed to line up a few retailers to stock the loom, and quit his day job. He is a cheerful advertisement for the American dream. "The longer you stay, the more you see the opportunity," Ng told me from his home in Michigan, where he is working on a loom upgrade and his next invention. "Whatever you work for, you can own."

最初的彩虹織機是一塊帶圖釘網格的木板，吳昌俊發明它是爲了討女兒們的歡心，她們非常喜歡做手工。這個東西在家裏大受歡迎，於是他用模鑄塑料製作了一具彩虹織機，拿出自己的儲蓄，又從家人那裏湊了一些錢，開始做生意。終於，吳昌俊說服了幾家零售商購買彩虹織機，然後他辭去了工作。他是美國夢一個令人愉快的展示。“你留在這裏的時間越長，看到的機會就越多，”吳昌俊在他密歇根的家裏跟我說，他目前正在研究彩虹織機的升級版以及下一個發明，“不管你爲什麼緣由努力，你都可以有所收穫。”

His loom, by the way, is now manufactured in China, which makes a lot of things but invents very few.

順便說一下，他的彩虹織機目前在中國製造。中國可以製造很多東西，但發明的東西非常少。

In Ng's story you can discern the main components of America's success as an incubator of new things: a welcome mat for talented, ambitious immigrants. An education system that (when it is not teaching test-taking) values creativity. The availability of start-up capital. Patent laws that protect intellectual property. An infrastructure that gets things shipped and marketed. And, perhaps most important, a culture that preaches opportunity and celebrates the risk-taker, the pioneer. From the Wright Brothers taking flight, to Bill Bowerman of Nike using a waffle iron to revolutionize running shoes, to Steve Jobs and his beautiful machines, to Choon Ng, we worship the inventive spark.

在吳昌俊的故事裏，你可以看到美國作爲新生事物孵化器成功的主要元素：對有才華、有事業心的移民的歡迎。重視創造力的教育系統（當它不教應試課程的時候）。可以獲得創業資金。有保護知識產權的專利法。有完善的基礎設施來運輸和銷售貨物。也許最重要的是，它還有一種宣揚機會，爲冒險者、開拓者喝彩的文化。從萊特兄弟(Wright Brothers)的飛行實驗，到耐克(Nike)的比爾·鮑爾曼(Bill Bowerman)使用烙餅器來革新跑步鞋，到史蒂夫·喬布斯(Steve Jobs)美麗的蘋果設備，再到吳昌俊。我們崇拜發明的火花。

The question is, can we keep it up?

問題是，我們能保持嗎？

The culture part, at least, seems to be alive and well. "Entrepreneur" is to the academic achiever of today what "doctor" and "lawyer" were to my generation. "It's the cool thing," said Bill Aulet, who runs a center for entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I would say nationally we're looking at 20 or 25 percent of the student population that wants to be entrepreneurs."

這種鼓勵創業的文化，至少看起來仍然有很大的影響。如今，優秀學生眼中“創業者”的地位，就好像我們那一代人眼中“醫生”和“律師”的地位一樣。“這是一件了不起的事，”在麻省理工學院（Massachusetts Institute of Technology，簡稱MIT）負責一個創業中心的比爾·奧萊特(Bill Aulet)說。“我會說，從全國範圍來看，大概有20%或30%的學生想要成爲創業者。”

But for all the pop-culture enthusiasm, there are signs that our innovative dynamism is diminishing. The pace of new business creation, on a per-capita basis, has been in a slow but steady decline since the mid-1980s, according to the Kauffman Foundation, which studies entrepreneurial trends. That suggests that other essentials of a thriving innovative economy have been neglected.

但是，儘管流行文化鼓勵創業精神，卻有一些跡象顯示，我們的創新活力正在不斷下降。根據研究創業趨勢的考夫曼基金會(Kauffman Foundation)，上世界80年代中期以來，從人均水平來看，新企業誕生的速度一直在下降，雖然下降得很慢。這就意味着一個蓬勃發展的創新性經濟所需的其他要素已經被忽視。

Let us count the ways. The decline of our education system is exaggerated but real, especially in the scientific and technical fields. The Internet has made it harder to enforce intellectual property rights, creating havens for pirates and narrowing the advantage of innovator over copycat. (Ng's greatest frustration is protecting his patent against aggressively lawyered-up imitators.)

讓我們來看看造成這個局面的原因吧。我們教育體系的墮落被誇大了，但問題的確存在，尤其是在科技領域。互聯網增加了保護知識產權的難度，成了盜版者的避風港，縮小了創新者相對於模仿者的優勢。（最讓吳昌俊感到沮喪的，是如何保護他的專利不被有律師撐腰的模仿者盜用。）

Start-up capital is still more abundant than anywhere else on earth, but the supply has been depleted by the recession. Dane Stangler, Kauffman's research director, said most new small businesses are financed not by high-profile venture capital firms, but by family and friends, including home equity loans that went away when the housing bubble burst. Crowdfunding is a new source of capital, but still minuscule.

美國的創業資本仍然比地球上的任何其他地方都充足，但是已經因爲經濟衰退而日漸枯竭。考夫曼基金會的研究主任戴恩·施坦格勒(Dane Stangler)說，大多數新建的小型企業的投資，並非來自著名的風險投資公司，而是來自家人和朋友，包括房屋淨值貸款，這種貸款在房地產市場泡沫破裂的時候也消失了。“衆籌”(crowdfunding)是一種新的資本來源，但規模仍然微不足道。

And then there is the erosion of our infrastructure — physical and intellectual. James Fallows, who wrote up The Atlantic's great-inventions list (and who is an astute student of the economic cultures of the U.S. and China) worries about the dwindling of America's publicly financed research. The budgets of the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other sources of investment in the long-term basic science that undergirds practical innovation have been slowly eroding — even before the ham-handed budget sequester and the idiotic government shutdown. "This is more maddening than the other most obvious problem, the neglect of physical infrastructure, because it would be so much easier to solve," Fallows told me in an email. "Rebuilding bridges, ports, etc. takes a long time. Increasing research budgets is an ‘it's only money' issue. The sums are small on the national budgetary scale but large in their implications."

還有我們的基礎設施的削弱，這既包括實體的基礎設施，也包括知識上的。詹姆斯·法洛斯(James Fallows)撰寫了《大西洋》月刊(The Atlantic)的偉大發明名單（他對美國和中國的經濟文化也有深入的研究）。他對美國政府出資的研究的日益減少感到擔憂。美國國立衛生研究院(National Institutes of Health)、國家科學基金會(National Science Foundation)的預算不斷減少，長期基礎科學研究的其他資金來源也在慢慢減少，而實際創新需要基礎科學研究的支撐。甚至在笨拙的預算縮減和愚蠢的政府關門發生之前，這些資金就已經在減少了。法洛斯在一封郵件中告訴我，“這比其他最明顯的問題，以及忽視實體的基礎設施更令人抓狂，因爲解決這個容易多了。重建橋樑、港口要花很長時間。增加研究預算則是花錢就能解決的問題。這些花費在全國預算中的比重很小，但是影響巨大。”

PROBABLY the most perverse impediment is our immigration law. Currently, Bill Aulet reports, the brightest foreign students come to M.I.T., earn degrees in high-demand disciplines (with a healthy side order of rigorous entrepreneurship training) and then are recruited to work in Canada or Britain because they can't get an American green card. "We should be embracing these people," Aulet said, as a source of the heterogeneity and drive that generate new ideas.

也許最有悖常理的障礙就是我們的移民法。比爾·奧萊特(Bill Aulet)說，目前，最聰明的外國學生來到MIT，拿到需求量最大的學科的學位（並且也會經歷嚴格的創業訓練），接着他們會到加拿大或英國工作，因爲他們得不到美國綠卡。奧萊特說，“我們應該接受這些人”，讓他們成爲多樣性的來源和創造新想法的動力。

"The U.S. attracts a lot of talent," Ng agreed. "But it's very hard to stay and contribute."

吳昌俊同意這種觀點。他說：“美國吸引了很多人才，但是這些人才很難留在這裏，也無法爲美國貢獻才智。”

The comprehensive immigration bill passed by the Senate includes more immigrant visas for foreign graduates in sciences and technology and a small pilot program to admit promising entrepreneurs. But that measure is stranded in the House, another casualty of our broken politics, and another reminder that these days Washington is where bright ideas go to die.

參議院通過的全面的移民法案，將爲更多科學和技術領域的外國畢業生提供移民簽證，還會啓動一項小型的試點項目，吸納有潛力的創業者進入美國。但是這個法案卻在衆議院擱淺了。這個法案成爲我們支離破碎的政治中的另一個犧牲品，這也提醒了我們，如今，華盛頓纔是聰明想法的墳墓。