| 允许人们梦想、发明、创作的文化将在争取经济独立的竞争中取胜。罗科•马丁诺（Rocco Martino）是CyberFone Technologie技术公司的创始人兼总裁，也是位于宾夕法尼亚州费城的对外政策研究所（Foreign Policy Research Institute）的高级研究员。本文刊载于《美国电子期刊》（eJournal USA）2009年11月号:《创新的根基》（Roots of Innovation）。 |
作者：罗科•里奥纳多．马丁诺
在工业革命（Industrial Revolution）前的长时期内，个人和国家的实际收入基本没有变化。例如，在全世界大多数地区，一个农民在1750年的生活水平和他的曾祖辈没有太大区别。但从19世纪初开始，这种情况在世界一些地区发生了转变。有些国家的增长和收入迅速提高，但其他国家的变化仍然不大。原因何在？答案之一是，新技术使创造、积累和传播更多财富成为可能。更深层的答案是，有些文化崇尚知识和变革，因而成为创新的沃土，让人们有可能担当风险、追求梦想，同时——绝非偶然地——使国人致富。那么，落后国家是因为受到传统拖累、集权控制窒息或官僚文化的阻碍吗？
长期以来，美国一直是创新和创新致富的领导力量；甚至可以说，这种思维方式是基于这个国家的DNA。美国的开国元勋本杰明•富兰克林（Benjamin Franklin）一人就有包括避雷针、富兰克林取暖炉、双焦眼镜和软性导尿管等多项发明。（虽然富兰克林没有申请这些发明专利，但他的其他创新活动充分表明了他的赚钱头脑！）。近年来，包括香港、新加坡、台湾、韩国和日本在内的环太平洋经济体也展现了类似技能——尽管中国和印度正在大力发展经营实力和寻求全球经济领导地位。
石油输出国组织（OPEC）成员国因其石油资产而赚取巨额收益，但它们大多没有表现出强大的创新能力，也没有大量参与全球经济发展。可以说，石油为这些国家带来可观的人均收入，但却抑制了进行新投资或鼓励创新的积极性。那个地区的有些政府——包括迪拜——似乎意识到这个问题，它们投入巨资打造金融和娱乐基础设施，而沙特阿拉伯的沙特国王大学（King Saud University）现有7万名学生。
在拉丁美洲，巴西已成为崛起的领导力量，在现代革新技术的国内应用及其对外出口方面取得了重大进步。
创新才能以及有效利用创新解决问题和创造财富，并不是美国的发明，它的传播也不止于本文所提到的国家。但在任何地方，有利于创新氛围的观点、习惯和思想的出现，都是对文化、个人能动力以及政府对新思想的支持度的挑战。
影响文化
文化如何影响创新？创新又如何影响文化？
文化与创新彼此相关。不支持、不能支持或不愿支持创新的文化无法创新；但是，创新一旦生成会影响文化，两者相辅相成。历史上证明这一点的例子不胜枚举。在当今的网络时代，通讯和信息技术无处不在，这种影响更加明显。
兼具手机、计算和互联网接入功能的智能手机的出现，带来了影响舆论、加快趋势和推进文化转变的工具。阅读习惯已从报纸和书籍转到言简意赅的即时消息或观点。讨论和书信先是被电子邮件大量取代，如今又有Twitter(推特) 和其他的微博客网占位。网络文化大幅缩短了从认知到决策的时间，也显著压缩了利用知识创造更多知识的周期。从任何地方向任何人传送的即时信息，现已成为立即影响看法和动机的载体——也有可能为操纵炒作打开了方便之门。这种加速的“认知”能够影响教育、舆论、娱乐、风俗习惯和文化发展。
在世界大多数地区，文化最初是在以吃饱饭为主要目的的人群中，按照农耕社会的生活节奏发展起来的。今天，文化往往是由具有独特氛围、方式、风俗和传统的相互关联的群体形成，其关联性可以表现为教育水平、宗教信仰、家庭纽带、族裔、地理位置或民族。文化也是促进个人或群体创造性的驱动力。
创新是创造新事物的艺术，无论是诗歌、文章、花卉、数学定理、医学进步或者发明。近来，技术被视为是激发创新的重要力量，特别是信息技术。这在很大程度上归功于全球财富在过去60年中的显着增加，其足迹可溯自1946年制造的第一台通用电子计算机。随着通讯能力和可视化技术的重大进展，计算机时代促成了财富大幅增长，即使在原来没有重工业基础的地区，也能产生新的产业。这方面的例子有新加坡和台湾的微芯片产业，以及爱尔兰和菲律宾软件业的发展。类似的发展也使有重工业能力的国家得以扩大经济规模，如中国、印度和日本。
这些进展相辅相成，每项创新会自然引发另一项创新，但这些都离不开崇尚知识和变革的文化。数世纪来，人们不断努力寻求更简单、快速的计算方法。计算机诞生之前，曾经有顺应当时工业能力而产生的机械和电气机器。直至电子管稳定性及其使用知识积累到一定程度，才能设想和造出第一台电子计算机。计算机使人造卫星成为可能，进而催生了通讯革命。同样，电路知识及其利用导致电视机和以数字化为主的可视化技术的问世，最终形成了造就当今网络时代的三股信息力量。
1940年代和其后几十年间在美国——主要是在加州硅谷地区——出现的一系列事件带来的现代个人电脑的问世，也并非巧合。那里的主流文化的得以让有设想的人们以及能够将他们的设想转化为实用产品的手段聚集到一起。
今天，我们生活在《纽约时报》（New York Times）专栏作家托马斯．弗里德曼（Thomas Friedman）所称的“扁平世界”中。即使我们的世界不完全平，肯定比较平；在这个世界，即时的通讯和方便的信息，使有利创新的文化跨越了国界，也使比以往更多的世界公民能够进行创造和革新。
雄心抱负
即便在硅谷、在印度的班加罗尔地区或在世界的其他创新中心，也并非人人都是创新者。创新的人有梦想，也有成就梦想的性格力量。这种“抱负”是个人内心深处的驱动力和追求成就的雄心；它不可创造，但可培养、扶助和鼓励——无论是在技术、医学、艺术还是农业领域。
| Those cultures that allow their people to dream, innovate, and produce will be the winners in the race for economic independence. Rocco Martino is founder and president of CyberFone Technologies and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This article appears in the November issue of eJournal USA, “Roots of Innovation.” |
By Rocco Leonard Martino
Until the Industrial Revolution, real income for individuals and nations was essentially flat. Over much of the globe, the living standard of, say, a farmer in 1750 would not differ greatly from that of his great-grandparent. Since the start of the 19th century, in some parts of the world this has changed. Growth and income for some nations has risen dramatically, but for others it is still flat. Why? One answer is that new technologies made possible the creation, accumulation, and dissemination of ever greater wealth. A deeper answer is that some cultures embraced knowledge and change, and thus emerged as the fertile soil in which innovators could take risks, pursue their dreams, and, not coincidentally, enrich their fellow citizens. Are the nations that lag bogged down by tradition, stultifying central control, or a culture of bureaucratic impediments?
The United States has long been a leader in both innovation and its application to wealth generation. One even might argue that the mindset was part of the nation’s DNA. One of its founders, Benjamin Franklin, alone was responsible for inventing the lightning rod, the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses, and the flexible urinary catheter. (Although Franklin chose not to patent these inventions, his many other entrepreneurial activities amply demonstrate his proclivity for making money!) In recent years, Pacific Rim economies including Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan have demonstrated similar skills, even as China and India develop significant earning capability and bid for roles as global economic leaders.
Member nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) earn vast returns for their oil assets but mostly have neither displayed a great capacity for innovation nor participated greatly in the global economic expansion. Arguably these nations’ significant oil-derived per capita income dampens incentive to invest in new ventures or to encourage innovation. Some regional governments seem aware of the problem, including Dubai, with its heavy investments in creating a financial and recreational infrastructure, and Saudi Arabia, whose King Saud University now has 70,000 students.
In Latin America, Brazil has emerged as a leader, making significant strides in applying modern innovative techniques internally and also for export.
The genius for innovation and its productive application to problem solving and wealth generation was not a U.S. invention, and its spread will continue far beyond the nations mentioned here. Everywhere, though, the emergence of innovation-friendly climates of opinion, habits, and ideas will be a challenge of culture, individual initiative, and government support for new ideas.
Affecting Culture
How does culture affect innovation, and vice versa?
Culture and innovation are linked. Innovation cannot occur in a culture that does not, cannot, or will not support it; but once created, an innovation affects the culture, and the two grow together. History is full of examples that demonstrate this. In today’s Cyber Age of pervasive communication and information technology, this impact is pronounced.
The emergence of the smart phone - the handheld device coupling the cell phone with computing capabilities and Internet access, has created tools for modifying public opinion, speeding trends and intensifying culture shifts. Reading habits have shifted from newspapers and books to short bursts of instant facts or opinions. Discussions and letters have been heavily replaced initially by e-mail and now by Twitter and other micro-blogging sites. Cyber-culture has dramatically shortened the time from knowledge to decision and shortened dramatically the cycle in which knowledge is recycled to create still more knowledge. Instant information, from anywhere to anyone, has now become a vehicle for instant impact on opinion and motivation – and a potential opening for manipulation. This acceleration of ‘knowing’ can impact education, public opinion, entertainment, mores, and cultural development.
In much of the world, cultures originally developed among peoples dedicated primarily to feeding themselves, to the rhythms of agrarian life. Today culture often is shaped by the unique atmosphere, ways, mores, and traditions of a group of people connected in some fashion. That connection can be education level, religious beliefs, family linkages, ethnicity, geographic location, or nationality. And culture also is a driving force behind personal or group creativity.
Innovation is the art of creating something new, whether a poem, a writing, a flowering plant, a mathematical theorem, a medical advance, or an invention. Most recently there has been great focus on technology, especially information technology, as a major catalyst for innovation. This is due in large measure to the remarkable advances in global wealth in the past six decades tracing back to the creation of the general-purpose electronic computer in 1946. Linked with major advances in communication capability and in visualization techniques, the computer era has spawned a significant growth of wealth and made possible the birth of new industries, even in locations with no previous heavy-industry capability. Examples are the microchip industries of Singapore and Taiwan, and the software programming developments in Ireland and the Philippines. Similar developments have enlarged the economies of nations with existing heavy-industry capability, such as China, India, and Japan.
These developments built upon each other, each innovation leading logically to the next, and all depending upon a culture that embraced knowledge and change. Attempts have been made for centuries to find ways to compute more easily and quickly. Mechanical and electrical machines built within the industrial capabilities of their time preceded the computer. It was only the rise in electronic-tube stability and knowledge of its use that made it possible to conceive and build the first electronic computer. Computers made satellites possible, leading in turn to the communication revolution. And the same knowledge and use of circuits led to television and visualization techniques, mainly digital, that complete the information triad of power that has created today’s Cyber Age.
Nor was it a coincidence that so many of the events that led to the modern personal computer emerged in the United States in the 1940s and the following decades, with a concentration in California’s Silicon Valley region. There, the prevailing culture brought together people with ideas and devices that could embody those ideas into a working product.
Today we live in what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman calls a “flat world.” If not yet completely flat, ours certainly is a flatter world, one where instant communication and availability of information bring innovation-friendly culture across national boundaries and empower ever larger numbers of world citizens to create and to innovate.
Fire in the Belly
Even in the Silicon Valley, India’s Bangalore region, or any of the other world centers of innovation, not everyone is an innovator. Innovators are individuals with dreams and the strength of character to bring their dreams to fruition. This “fire in the belly” -- a deep-seated personal drive and ambition to accomplish and achieve -- cannot be created, but it can be nurtured, fostered, encouraged, whether in technology, medicine, the arts, or agriculture.
The major steps in building the cultural climate for innovation include expanding educational opportunities and facilities, providing financial support for innovators, eliminating bureaucratic impediments to recognition of an innovation, and spending money to publicize an innovative product.
Consider a musical composition. To assure its success there must be educational faculties available to train potential composers in music, financial support for a composer to create the piece, a legal infrastructure providing copyright protection against illegal copying, and funding to ensure performance of the music.
Another encouraging development is that many new technologies lower the barriers to further innovation, a virtuous circle that holds the promise of ushering in a more global culture of innovation. Before the emergence of cell phones and mobile smart phones, long-distance communication required extensive and expensive infrastructure, beyond the ability of many poor nations to afford. But cell phone towers are much simpler and cheaper to build than wired networks. As a result, millions of potential innovators who might otherwise have been isolated and bypassed are empowered to participate in the growing community of innovators.
The Internet
The emergence of the Internet, together with affordable cell phone or other access in a growing part of the world, is revolutionizing cultural development. This does not mean that Africans, Indians, or Chinese are becoming more like Europeans, Japanese, or Americans. It means that more global citizens can communicate and that one’s location is gradually becoming a less important factor in one’s ability to innovate.
The current cell phone population is more than half the world population, and closing in on the total figure. The cell phone is rapidly becoming the universal means of communication, entertainment, source of information, and even education. Data stored in countless systems and data banks around the world can be accessed and used anywhere, anytime, by anyone. This dramatic shift puts the resources of the world at everyone’s fingertips.
While earlier technologies such as radio communicated across national boundaries — consider the Cold War battles between western shortwave broadcasters and Soviet jamming signals – the information flow is far greater today.
Attempts to control the Internet or cellular traffic can be only partially successful. Disclosure of information, sharing of ideas, impetus for creation, and successful innovation are bound to expand.
Nor should we link all innovation to technological advance. Pioneers in music, literature, and dance, for example, always will press the frontiers of their respective arts. But all can benefit from technology as well. Many is the composer who creates sound using special software on a personal computer. And technology aids immeasurably in the dissemination, use, and appreciation of their creations. No longer need a band rely upon a recording label to distribute its music when YouTube or the equivalent is but a click away.
Culture and innovation, then, feed upon each other and expand jointly together. On a global basis, there are no limits to what is possible, save one: An innovator must have the motivation, courage, and fortitude to prevail. Countries that encourage these individuals will advance both their culture and their innovation potential. Those that do not will lag behind.
Those nations that permit the individual to dream, innovate, and produce will gain stature and influence in the 21st century. Overcoming hidebound traditions (although certainly not all traditions), restrictive government, and unnecessary bureaucratic impediments will be major factors in this race. A culture rewarding ingenuity and success will catalyze a new and international wave of economic growth. Globally, a tsunami is building that will sweep the unprepared before it.
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
