Seven years ago, a student came to me and asked me to invest in his company.

七年前，一个学生来找我，叫我投资他的公司。

He said, “I’m working with three friends, and we’re going to try to disrupt an industry byselling stuff online.”

他说：“我和三个朋友一起工作，我们打算通过网络售货来改变一个行业原有模式”

And I said, “OK,you guys spent the whole summer on this, right?”

我说：“好的， 你们一整个夏天都花在这上面了，对么？”

“No, we all took internships just in case it doesn’t work out.”

“不，我们都去实习了，万一它没成功呢。”（他们说）

“All right, but you’re going to in full time once you graduate.”

“好吧，但是一旦毕业，你们打算全职投身于这个事业吧。”（我说）

“Not exactly.We’ve all lined up backup jobs.”

“并不是，我们都有好些候补的工作呢。”

Six months go by, it’s the day before the company launches, and there is still not a functioning website.

六个月过去了，但是在公司成立的前一天，他们仍旧没有建出一个能够正常运转的网站。

“You guys realize，the entire company is a website. That is literally all it is.”

你们要知道，整个公司实际上就是一个网站，网站就是它的全部啊。

So I obviously declined to invest.

所以，很显然地，我拒绝了对投资。

And they ended up naming this company Warby Parker. They sell glasses on line.

他们最终把公司命名为瓦比·帕克，他们在网上卖眼镜。

They were recently recognized as the world’s most innovative company and valued at over a billion dollars.

最近，他们的公司被认为是世界上最具创新性的公司，估值超过十亿美元。

And now? My wife handles our investments.

�`现在？我的妻子负责我们的投资。

Why was I so wrong?

我为什么错的这么厉害呢？

To find out, I’ve been studying people that I come to call “originals”.

为了找原因，我研究了那些我称为“创新者”的人们。

Originals arenonconformists, people who not only have new ideals but take action to champion them. 

创新者们不墨守成规 他们不仅仅拥有新主意而且会行动起来捍卫它。

They are people who stand out and speak up. Originals drive creativity and change in the world. They’re the people you want to bet on.

他们是勇于站出来发声的那群人。创新者推动世界的创新和改革。你会想要在他们身上下注。

And they look nothing like I expected.

他们看上去一点都不像我之前所期待的那样。

I want to show you today three things I’ve learned about recognizing originals and becoming a little bit more like them.

我想告诉你们我所学到的关于如何识别原创者们得三个特征，并慢慢向他们看齐。

So the first reason that I passed on Warby Parker was they were really slow getting off the ground.

首先，我错过瓦比·帕克的第一个原因是他们一开始的阶段进展太慢了。

Now, you are all intimately familiar with the mind of a procrastinator.

现在你们都应该已经熟悉拖延症患者的头脑。

Well, I have a confession for you. I’m the opposite. I’m a procrastinator.

好吧，我要向你们承认我是一个提前症患者。

You know that panic you feel a few hours before a big deadline when you haven’t done anything yet.

你知道，在一个重要的截止日期前的几个小时，如果你什么都没做，那你会觉得很恐慌。

I just feel that a few months ahead of time.

但是，我在截止日期前的几个月就会有这样的感觉。

So this started early: when I was a kid, I took Nintendo games very seriously.

这从我很小的时候就开始了。当我还是个孩子时，我非常认真地玩“任天堂”游戏。

I would wake up at 5am, start playing and not stop until I had mastered them.

我五点起床，开始玩游戏直到完全掌握它们。

Eventually it got so out of hand that a local newspaper came and did a story on the dark side of Nintendo, starring me.

最终，事情变得无法控制了（我玩游戏上瘾了）， 当地的一家报纸写了一篇关于“任天堂”负面影响的新闻，主角就是我。

Since then, I have traded hair for teeth.

从那以后，随着年龄的增长，我头发越来越少。

But this served me well in college, because I finished my senior thesis four months before the deadline.

但这对我的大学生活很有用，因为我在截止日期前四个月就完成了我的毕业论文。

And I was proud of that, until a few years ago. I have a student named Jihae, who came to me and said, “I have my most creative ideals when I’m procrastinating.”

对此我很骄傲，直到几年前我有一个学生叫Jihae，她来跟我说：“当我拖延的时候，我会拥有最具创新性的主意。”

And I was like, “That’s cute, where are the four papers you owe me?”

我说 ，“好可爱，可是你欠我的四篇论文呢？”

No, she was one of our most creative students, and as an organizational psychologist, this is the kind of idea that I test.

开个玩笑，她现在是我们最具创新性的学生之一。作为一名组织心理学家，这就是我测试的一种。

So I challenged her to get some data. She goes into a bunch of companies.

所以我向她提出质疑，为了得到些数据，她调查了一堆公司。

She has people fill out surveys about how often they procrastinate. Then she gets their bosses to rate how creative and innovative they are.

她让人们填写问卷，看他们有多经常会去拖延。然后她让他们的老板去评分，看他们谁更具有创新性。

And sure enough, the precrastinators like me, who rush in and do everything early are rated as less creative than people who procrastinate moderately.

果不出所料，像我这样的提前症者，就是那些总是仓促行事，早早做完所有事情的人， 所得到的创新性评分要比那些适度拖延者得到的评分低。

So I want to know what happen to the chronic procrastinators.

所以我想知道，慢性拖延者身上究竟发生了些什么？

She was like, “I don’t know. They didn’t fill out my survey.”

她说，“我不知道 他们没填我的调查问卷。”（……）

No, here are our results. 

现在，我们得出了结论。

You actually do see that the people who wait to the last minute are so busy goofing off that they don’t have any new ideas. And on the flip side, the people who race in are such a frenzy of anxiety that they don’t have original thoughts either.

你们确实能看到，那些等到最后一分钟的人，贪图玩乐，以致没有任何新的主意；另一方面，那些仓促行事的人，他们总是非常得焦虑，他们也没有什么新颖的想法。

There’re a sweet spot where originals seem to live.

创新者就处于这两者中，一个有意思的位置。

Why is this? Maybe originals people just have bad work habits. Maybe procrastinating does not cause creativity.

为什么是这样呢？可能创新者的工作习惯就是比较差。或许拖延症并不能引起创造力。

To find out, we designed some experiments.

为了找到原因，我们设计了一些实验。

We asked people to generate new business ideas, and then we get independent readers to evaluate how creative and useful they are.

我们要求人们想一些新的商业想法，然后我们去找一些独立的观众，来评估他们的观点是否具有创新性和价值。

And some of them are asked to do the task right away. Others we randomly assign to procrastinate by dangling Minesweeper in front of them for either five or ten minutes.

有些人被要求立即做这项任务，另外一些人，我们随机拖延了一些时间，在他们面前扫雷，拖延大概5到10分钟。

And sure enough, the moderate procrastinators are 16 percent more creative the other two groups.

的的确确，适度拖延者比其他两个群体，创新性增加16%。

Now, Minesweeper is awesome, but it’s not the driver of the effect, because if you play the game first before you learn about the task, there’s no creativity boost.

现在，扫雷游戏很棒，但是它并不是驱动因子，因为如果你在了解任务之前玩这个游戏，那就不会激发任何创新。

It’s only when you are told that you’re going to be working on this problem, and then you start procrastinating but the task is still active in the back of your mind, that you start to incubate.

只有当你被告知你要去做这个问题了，然后你开始拖延，但是在你脑子深处，这个任务依旧是活跃的，你开始酝酿。

Procrastination gives you time to consider divergent ideas, to think in nonlinear ways, to make unexpected leaps.

拖延让你有时间去发散思维，以非线性的方式思考，得到意外的创新成果。

So just as we were finishing these experiments, I was writing to write a book about originals, and I sought, “This is the perfect time to teach myself to procrastinate, while writing a chapter on procrastination.”

所以，就在我们要完成这些实验时，我开始写一本关于“创新者”的书，我想现在这个时候正是合适的时机让我自己认识拖延症，而当时我也正好在写拖延症的章节。

So I metaprocrastinated, and like any self-respecting precrastinator, I woke up early the next morning and I made a to-do list with steps on how to procrastinate.

所以，我放肆地拖延起来。就像那些有自尊心的提前症症者，第二天早上我很早醒来，我列了一个关于如何拖延的清单。

And then I worked diligently toward my goal of not making progress toward my goal.

然后我开始孜孜不倦的努力，朝着我的目标前进。我的目标就是：不要向我的目标作出任何进展。

I started writing the procrastination chapter, and one day, --I was halfway through-- I literally put it away in mid-sentence for months.

我开始写关于拖延的章节。有一天，我写到一半，我真的在一句话写到一半的时候把它收起来， 就那样放了好几个月。

It was agony. But when I came back to it, I had all sorts of new ideas.

（对于一个提前症患者来说）那真的很痛苦，但是等我再回去看的时候，我有了好多新主意。

As Aaron Sorkin put it, “You call it procrastinating, I call it thinking.”

就像亚伦·索金说的，“你把它叫做拖延。我把它叫做思考”。

And along the way I discovered that a lot of great originals in history were procrastinators.

这一个过程中，我发现，很多历史上伟大的创新者都是拖延症者。

Take Leonardo da Vinci. He toiled on and off for 16 years on the Mona Lisa.

比如达芬奇 他在创作“蒙娜丽莎”上断断续续工作了16年。

He felt like a failure. He wrote as much in his journal. But some of the diversions he took in optics transformed the way that he modeled light and made he into a much better painter.

他在他的日记中写道，他感觉就像一个失败者。但他后来在光学研究上分散了一些精力，这改变了他描绘光线的方法，这也让他变成了一个更加卓越的画家。

What about Martin Luther King, Jr.?

马丁·路德·金又是如何呢？

The night before the biggest speech of his life, the March of Washington, he was up past 3am, rewriting it.

在他生命中那场最大的演讲的前夜——华盛顿游行的前夜，他凌晨三点后起来重新写演讲稿。

He’s sitting in the audience waiting for his turn to go onstage, and he is still scribbling notes and crossing out lines.

他坐在观众席里等着轮到他上场的时候，他还在涂写修改演讲稿。

When he gets onstage, 11 minutes in, he leaves his prepared remarks to utter four words that changed the course of history: “I have a dream.”

当他上台十分钟后，他扔掉了准备好的演讲稿，说出了那四个改变历史轨迹的词： 我有一个梦想。

That was not in the script. By delaying the task of finalizing the speech until the very last minute, he left himself open to the widest range of possible ideas.

那些内容不在演讲稿里，他的演讲稿一直都未完成，直到最后一分钟，他让自己尽可能地去思考各种可能性。

And because the text wasn’t set in stone, he had freedom to improvise.

设定非一成不变，他有即兴创作提升的自由。

Procrastinating is a vise when it comes to productivity, but it can be a virtue for creativity.

当谈到生产力的时候，拖延是一种恶习；但是对于创新而言，拖延是一种美德。

What you see with a lot of great originals is that they are quick to start but they are slow to finish.

你从许多伟大的创新者身上可以看到，他们开始得很快，但是完成得很慢。

And this is what I missed with Warby Parker. When they were dragging their heals for six months, I look at them and said, “You know, a lot of other companies are starting to sell glasses online.”

这就是我错过了瓦比·帕克的原因，当他们拖了六个月时，我看着他们，说 “你知道么，许多其他的公司已经开始在网上卖眼镜了”。

They missed the first-mover advantage. But what I didn’t realize was they were spending all that time trying to figure out how to get people to be comfortable ordering glasses online.

他们已经错过了成为行业先行者的优势，但是我没意识到的是，他们花了那些时间，尝试去解决如何让人们在网上买眼镜的时候有舒适的体验度。

And it turns out the first-mover advantages is mostly a myth.

事实上，先行者的优势几乎就是一个神话。

Look at a classic study of over 50 product categories, comparing the first movers who created the market with the improvers who introduce something different and better. What you see is that the first movers had a failure rate of 47 percent, compared with only 8 percent for the improvers.

看看一个典型的超过50个产品品类的研究，比较那些创造市场的先行者和那些引进新东西的改进者的表现，你会发现，先行者失败的几率有47%，相比而言改进者只有8%。

Look at Facebook, waiting to build a social network until after Myspace and Friendster.Look at Google, waiting for years after Altavista and Yahoo.

看看谷歌，出现在Altavista和雅虎之后，看看脸书，创建于Myspace和Friendster之后。

It’s much easier to improve on somebody else’s ideas than it is to create something new from scratch.

比起从头开始创造新的东西来说 去改善其他人的点子要容易的多。

So the lesson I learned is that to be originals you don’t have to be first. You just have to be different and better.

所以我学到的一个教训是，作为一个创新者，你并不需要是第一个，只要别具一格和精益求精就够了。

But that wasn’t the only reason that I passed on Warby Parker.

但这并不是我错过瓦比·帕克的唯一原因。

They were also full of doubts. They had backup plans lined up, and that made me doubt that they had the courage to be original, because I expected that originals would look something like this.

他们还充满了不确定性。他们有好些其他的后备计划，那让我怀疑他们是否有勇气成为创新者。因为我期望的创新者会像这样一样。

Now, on the surface, a lot of people look confident, but behind the scenes, they feel the same fear and doubt that the rest of us do. They just manage it differently.

现在，从表面上来看，很多创新者看上去都很自信，但是在背后，他们也和其他人一样，同样感到害怕和怀疑。他们只是有不一样的处理方式。

Let me show you: this is a depiction of how the creative process works for most of us.

让我展示给你看，这描绘了对于我们大多数人 创新机制是如何运作的：

(1- This is awesome 这个很棒

(2- This is tricky  这个很狡猾

(3- This is crap  这个是屎

(4- I am crap  我是屎

(5- This might be okay  这个可能还行

(6- This is awesome  这个很棒

Now, in my research, I discovered there are two different kinds of doubt. There’s self-doubt and idea doubt.

现在，在我的调查中，我发现有两种怀疑：自我的怀疑和对主意的怀疑。

Self-doubt is paralyzing. It leads you to freeze.

自我怀疑会让人瘫痪，它会让你的思维冻结。

But idea doubt is energizing. It motivates you to test, to experiment, to refine, just like MLK did.

但是对主意的怀疑可以加强活力，它激励你去测试，去实验，去改善，就像MLK那样。

And so the key to be original is just a simple thing of voiding the leap from step 3 to step 4.

所以称为创新者的关键其实是一件很简单的事情，就是防止从步骤3跳到步骤4。

Instead of saying, “I am crap,” you say, “the first few drafts are always crap, and I’m just not there yet.”

不要说：“我是废物” 而要说 “最开始的一些尝试总是垃圾，我只是还没做完”。

So how do you get there? Well, there’s a clue, it turns out, in the Internet browser that you use.

那么你怎么样做完呢？结果是在你所用的因特网浏览器上就会给你个提示。

We can predict your job performance and your commitment just by knowing what web browser you use.

我们只要知道你用什么浏览器就能预测出你的工作表现和专注态度。

Now, some of you are not going to like the results of this study. But there’s good evidence that Firefox and Chrome users significantly outperform Internet explorer and Safari users.

现在，你们中的一些人，会不喜欢这项研究成果。有很好的证据表明，使用火狐和谷歌浏览器用户  要比苹果和IE浏览器用户表现的好的多。

Yes.

是的。

They also stay in their jobs 15 percent longer, by the way. Why? It’s not a technical advantage. The four browser groups on average have similar taping speed and they also have similar levels of computer knowledge.It’s about how you got the browser. Because if you use Internet Explorer or safari, those came preinstalled on your computer, and you accepted the default option that was handed to you. If you wanted Firefox or Chrome, you had to doubt the default and ask: Is there are different option out there, and then be a little resourceful and download a new browser.

顺便提一句，他们任职的时间也会延长15%。为什么？这不是一个技术优势，这四个浏览器用户群体平均有着相似的打字速度，他们也有相似的计算机水平，要紧的是你如何使用浏览器。因为如果你用IE或者苹果，它们之前已经在你的电脑里安装好了，你接受了交给你的默认选项，如果你想要火狐或者谷歌，你必须要怀疑默认选项，会问有没有其他的选择，然后找到资源下载新的浏览器。

So people hear about this study and they’re like, “Great, if I want to get better at my job, I just need to upgrade my browser?” No, it’s about to being the kind of person who takes the initiative to doubt the default and look for a better option.

所以人们听到了这个研究 ，他们说，太棒啦，如果我想要在工作上出色，我只要升级我的浏览器就好了，不，关键是要成为那样的人，主动去怀疑默认选项，寻找更好的选择。

And if you do that well, you will open yourself up to the opposite of déjà vu. There’s a name for it. It’s called vuja de. Vuja de is when you look at something you’ve seen many times before and all of a sudden see it with fresh eyes.

如果你这些做好，你就会看到与既视感相反的东西，这有个名字叫“感视既”。就是，当你看着某些你看到过很多次的东西，然后突然用一种新的眼光去看它。

It’s a screenwriter who looks at a movie script that can’t get the green light for more than half a century. In every past version, the main character has been an evil queen. But Jennifer Lee starts to question whether that makes sense. She rewrites the first act, reinvents the villain as a tortured hero and Frozen become the most successful animated movie ever.

这是一个编剧家，看着电影脚本，在很长的时间里都得不到认可和突破。在过去的每一个版本中，主角都是一个邪恶的皇后。但是詹妮弗·李开始质疑，那是否合理，她重写了第一幕，把反面人物重新写成了一个被折磨的英雄。自此《冰雪奇缘》成为了最成功的动画电影。

So there’s a simple message from this story. When you feel doubt, don’t let it go.

所以 从这个故事里我们得到了一个简单的信息： 当你感到怀疑的时候 不要放开它。

What about fear? Originals feel fear, too. They’re afraid of failing, but what sets them apart from the rest of us is that they’re even more afraid of failing to try. They know you can fail by starting a business that goes bankrupt or by failing to start a business at all. They know that in the long run, our biggest regrets are not our actions but our inactions.

关于害怕呢？创新者也会感到害怕，他们害怕失败。但是，把他们和我们分开来的是，他们更害怕不去尝试。他们知道，你会因为生意倒闭而失败，或者根本就没有开始这个生意；他们知道，从长远来看，我们最大的遗憾不是我们做了什么，而是我们没有做什么。

The things we wish we could redo, if you look at the science, are the chances not taken.

如果你看看科学，那些我们希望重做的事情是那些我们没有抓住的机会。

Elon Musk told me recently, he didn’t expect Tesla to succeed. He was sure the first few SpaceX launches would fail to make it to orbit, let alone get back, but it was too important not to try.

最近伊隆·马斯特告诉我他之前并不认为特斯拉会成功。他认为，最开始发射的SpaceX回收火箭不会抵达它的轨道，更别说回来了。但是，没有试验这一点太重要了。

And for so many of us, when we have an important idea, we don’t bother to try.

对我们那么多人来说，当我们有一个很重要要烦的主意，我们怕麻烦而不去试。

But I have some good news for you. You are not going to get judged on your bad ideas. A lot of people think they will. If you look across industries and ask people about their biggest idea, their most important suggestion, 85 percent of them stayed silent instead of speaking up. They were afraid of embarrassing themselves of looking stupid.

但是，我有一些好消息要告诉你们。你们不会因为你的坏主意被人下定义，很多人认为他们会，如果你跨行业看看，问问别人他们最大的主意，他们最重要的建议是什么 ？85%的人会保持沉默，不告诉你答案。他们害怕让自己尴尬。害怕让自己看上去更愚蠢。

But guess what? Originals have lots and lots of bad ideas, tons of them, in fact. Take the guy who invited this.

但是， 你猜怎样？创新者们有很多糟糕的主意，事实上，有很多很多。

Do you care that he came up with a talking doll so creepy that it scared not only kids but also adults, too? No, you celebrate Thomas Edison pioneering the light bulb.

看看发明了这个的人，你会不会在乎他想出了一个会说话的恐怖娃娃，它不仅吓坏了孩子还吓坏了成人？不，你会为托马斯·爱迪生发明了电灯泡而欢欣鼓舞。

If you look across fields, the greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they’re the ones who try the most.

如果你跨领域看看，最伟大的创新者，是那些有过最多失败经历的人。因为他们也是尝试最多的人。

Take classical composers, the best of the best. Why do some of them get more pages in encyclopedias than others and also have their compositions recorded more times? One of the best predictors is the sheer volume of compositions that they generate. The more output you churn out, the more variety you get and the better your chances of stumbling on something truly original. Even the three icons of classical music—Bach, Beethoven, Mozart had to generate hundreds and hundreds of compositions to come up with a much smaller number of masterpieces. 、

譬如古典音乐中的作曲家，顶尖中的顶尖，为什么在百科全书中，他们就比其他人多了几页呢？他们曲子的录音次数也最多？最好的语言指标制衣是他们作出了大量的曲子。你有更多的你就得到更多的多样化，就更有机会发现，真正创新的东西 甚至古典音乐界的三大伟人——巴赫 贝多芬、莫扎特、他们也必须要做出上百首曲子才能出一些杰作。

Now, you may be wondering, how did this guy become great without doing a whole lot? I don’t know how Wagner pulled that off. But for most of us, if we want to be more original, we have to generate more ideas.

现在你可能想这个人又没有做很多，他怎么就变得很棒了呢？ 我不知道瓦格纳是如何胜利完成的，但是，对于我们大多数人来说，如果我们想要更加创新些，我们就必须要想出更多的主意。

The Warby Parker founders, when they were trying to name their company, they need something sophisticated, unique, with no negative associations to build a retail brand, and they tested over 2000 possibilities before they finally put together Warby and Parker.

瓦比·帕克的创立者。当他们想要给他们公司命名的时候，他们想要一些复杂的，独特的没有什么负面联系的名字，来创建一个零售品牌。他们测试了超过两百种可能性，最终确定了瓦比·帕克。

So if you put all this together, what you see is that originals are not that different from the rest of us. They feel fear and doubt. They procrastinate. They have bad ideas. And sometimes, it’s not in spite of those qualities but because of them that they succeed.

所以如果你把这些整体来看，你看到的是，创新者们和我们并没有什么两样，他们也会害怕，也会怀疑，他们也会拖延，他们也有糟糕的主意，有时候不是尽管有了这些品质，而正是因为这些品质 他们才得以成功。

So when you see those things, don’t make the same mistake I did. Don’t write them off. And when that’s you, don’t count yourself out either. Know that being quick to start but slow to finish can boost your creativity, that you can motivate yourself by doubting your ideas and embracing the fear of failing to try, and that you need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones.

所以，当你看到这些东西的时候，不要抱怨自己犯过的错误，不要放弃他们。如果是你，那不要把自己排除在外，要记住：迅速开始，慢慢完成 可以激发你的创造力。你可以通过怀疑你的主意来激发你自己，拥抱对于尝试失败的恐惧，你会要先有很多糟糕的主意，才能得到一些好的主意。

Look, being original is not easy, but I have no doubt about this: it’s the best way to improve the world around us.

看！创新并不简单，但是对此我并不怀疑，我相信这是改善我们物质世界最好的方法。

Thank you!

谢谢！