精英逆袭,达人战胜专家的年代

The experts keep getting it wrong. And the oddballs keep getting it right.

专家总是弄错，怪人却总能碰对。

Over the past five years of business history, two events have shocked and transformed the nation. In 2007 and 2008, the housing market crumbled and the financial system collapsed, causing trillions of dollars of losses. Around the same time, a few little-known wildcatters began pumping meaningful amounts of oil and gas from U.S. shale formations. A country that once was running out of energy now is on track to become the world's leading producer.

在过去五年的商业史上，有两大事件震撼和改变了美国。在2007年和2008年，住房市场崩溃，金融体系瓦解，酿成数万亿美元损失。而差不多在同一时间，一些不知名的投机勘探者却开始从美国页岩层中开采出数量可观的石油和天然气。美国这个能源曾几近告竭的国家如今正向全球主要能源生产国迈进。

What's most surprising about both events is how few experts saw them coming -- and that a group of unlikely outsiders somehow did. Federal Reserve chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke failed to foresee the financial meltdown. Top banking executives were stunned, and leading investors such as Bill Gross, Jim Chanos and George Soros didn't fully anticipate the downturn.

这两大事件最让人惊讶的地方是，准确预见事态发展的专家寥寥无几――而一群不大可能的圈外人却做出了正确的预期。美国联邦储备委员会(Federal Reserve, 简称Fed)主席阿兰?格林斯潘和本?贝南克没能预见金融危机。银行业顶级高管惊得目瞪口呆，比尔?格罗斯(Bill Gross)、吉姆?查诺斯(Jim Chanos) 和乔治?索罗斯等顶尖投资者也没能完全预料到经济的衰退。

The big winners were people like John Paulson, an expert in mergers who only began researching housing in 2006 and scored a record $20 billion for his hedge fund. Jeffrey Greene, a Los Angeles playboy who partied with Paris Hilton, made $500 million predicting housing troubles.

大赢家是像约翰?鲍尔森(John Paulson)这样的人，他是一位并购专家，2006年才开始研究住房市场，但他为自己麾下的对冲基金赚得创纪录的200亿美元。与帕丽斯?希尔顿(Paris Hilton)往来甚密的洛杉矶花花公子杰弗里?格林(Jeffrey Greene)因预见住房市场危机而赚得5亿美元。

In 2006, Andrew Lahde was an out-of-work 35-year-old stuck in a cramped one-bedroom apartment; then he made tens of millions of dollars betting against subprime mortgages. So did Michael Burry, a doctor-turned-stock investor in northern California with Asperger's syndrome.

2006年，35岁的安德鲁?拉赫德(Andrew Lahde)住在一套只有一个卧室的狭小公寓里，没有工作；后来他通过做空次级抵押贷款赚得数千万美元。同样大赚特赚的还有北加州的迈克尔?伯里(Michael Burry)，他以前是医生，后来改行做了股票投资人，患有亚斯伯格综合症(Asperger's syndrome)。

Wall Street talks up the importance of being contrarian. But in 2007, most traders subscribed to the mantra that the Fed wouldn't let housing crumble or that the boom would continue, while others couldn't find a good way to short subprime mortgages. They left it for the amateurs to figure out.

华尔街会大谈反向操作的重要性。但2007年多数交易员都笃信Fed不会放任住房市场崩溃，他们还坚信市场的繁荣局面会持续下去，另一些交易员则找不到做空次级抵押贷款的好办法。于是他们任由圈外人去绞尽脑汁。

Less well known, but no less dramatic, is the story of America's energy transformation, which took the industry's giants almost completely by surprise. In the early 1990s, an ambitious Chevron executive named Ray Galvin started a group to drill compressed, challenging formations of shale in the U.S. His team was mocked and undermined by dubious colleagues. Eventually, Chevron pulled the plug on the effort and shifted its resources abroad.

没那么广为人知，但一样充满戏剧性的是美国能源产业的变革之路，这一过程可以说是完全出乎行业巨头的意料。在20世纪90年代初，雪佛龙一位名叫拉伊?加尔温(Ray Galvin)的雄心勃勃的高管组建了一个团队，试图在美国对富有挑战性的紧硬页岩层进行开采。他的团队受到将信将疑的同事的嘲笑和打击。最终，雪佛龙叫停了页岩气开采，将能源重心转移到了国外。

Exxon Mobil also failed to focus on this rock -- even though its corporate headquarters in Irving, Texas, were directly above a huge shale formation that eventually would flow with gas. Later, it would pay $31 billion to buy a smaller shale pioneer.

埃克森美孚也没能关注页岩气开采――尽管该公司位于德克萨斯州欧文(Irving)的总部正下方就是一个最终开掘出天然气的巨大页岩层。该公司后来以310亿美元收购了一家规模较小、开创页岩气开采先河的公司。

'I would be less than honest if I were to say to you [that] we saw it all coming, because we did not, quite frankly,' Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil's chairman and CEO said last year in an interview at the Council on Foreign Relations.

埃克森美孚董事长兼首席执行长雷克斯?蒂勒森(Rex Tillerson)去年在美国外交关系委员会接受采访时表示：“如果我对大家说，我们预计到了页岩气时代的来临，那我就太不诚实了，因为坦率地说我们并没有预见到。”

In 2003, Alan Greenspan warned that the nation's gas fields were running dry and urged Congress to back costly facilities to import gas. Famed investors Warren Buffett and Henry Kravis invested in a record-setting utility-company buyout in 2007, wagering that a dearth of U.S. natural gas would send prices higher. Instead, the U.S. has so much cheap natural gas today that it is set to export it. The country is also pumping 7.9 million barrels of oil a day, up more than 50% since 2006 and the most in nearly 25 years.

2003年，格林斯潘警告称，美国的天然气田即将枯竭，他敦促国会支持兴建昂贵的设施以进口天然气。著名投资者沃伦?巴菲特和亨利?克拉维斯(Henry Kravis) 2007年对一桩价格创纪录的公共事业公司股权收购交易进行了投资，他们押注美国天然气的紧缺会推高价格。但事实却是，美国如今拥有大量便宜的天然气，不仅能满足国内需求，而且有望出口。此外，美国一天可产790万桶石油，较2006年增产逾50%，为近25年来最高水平。

The resurgence in U.S. energy came from a group of brash wildcatters who discovered techniques to hydraulically fracture -- or frack -- and horizontally drill shale and other rock. Many of these men operated on the fringes of the oil industry, some without college degrees or much background in drilling, geology or engineering.

美国能源行业的复苏要归功于一批自负的投机勘探者，是他们首创了水力压裂以及页岩和其他岩石的横向 探技术。这其中许多人从事的是石油行业的边缘领域，一些人并没有大学学位，也没有什么 探、地质学或工程背景。

In the late 1990s, George Mitchell, the son of a Greek goatherder, ran a midsize Houston-based company with shrinking natural-gas production. His stock price was falling, the industry was on its back, the 79-year-old had been diagnosed with cancer and his wife was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. In almost two decades of trying, his men had not been able to coax enough natural gas from Mitchell Energy's Texas shale fields. But in 1998, one of Mr. Mitchell's engineers finally figured out how to properly fracture shale, stunning colleagues and larger competitors while launching the American energy revolution.

20世纪90年代末，希腊牧羊人的儿子乔治?米切尔(George Mitchell)在休斯敦经营一家名为米切尔能源（Mitchell Energy）的中型公司，当时这家公司面临天然气产量不断减少的局面。公司股价在下跌，整个行业都在走下坡路，79岁的米切尔被诊断出癌症，他的妻子则患有早期阿尔茨海默病(Alzheimer's disease)。经过近20年的尝试，米切尔手下员工仍未能从该公司位于德克萨斯州的页岩田中开采出充足的天然气。但到了1998年，米切尔手下一名工程师最终找到了压裂页岩的适当方法，这件事为美国能源革命拉开了序幕，震惊了同行及更大的竞争对手。

Harold Hamm grew up dirt-poor in a tiny town in Oklahoma. He began school around Christmas-time each year, once it became too cold to pick cotton, and he started his career raking out oil tanks. Over the past six years, Mr. Hamm and his company have discovered so much oil in North Dakota that he is now worth $14 billion. Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward of Oklahoma were land-leasing specialists; they managed to build the nation's second-largest gas producer by leading the charge into shale fields. Charif Souki, a Lebanese immigrant and former restaurateur who knew more about fajitas than fracking, today runs Cheniere Energy, a Houston-based company that is on track to become the first to export gas from the contiguous U.S.

哈罗德?哈姆(Harold Hamm)成长于俄克拉荷马州(一个小镇，家里穷得叮当响。他每年从 诞节前后开始上学，因为这时候天冷得不能摘棉花了。哈姆最初做的是清理油罐的工作。在过去六年里，哈姆和他的公司在北达科他州发现了非常多的石油，现在他的身价高达140亿美元。俄克拉荷马州的奥布雷?麦克伦登(Aubrey McClendon)和汤姆?沃德(Tom Ward)是从事土地租赁的专业人士；作为页岩气领域的先行者，他们成功地建起了美国第二大天然气生产商。相比水力压裂，黎巴嫩移民、曾为餐馆老板的谢里夫?苏基(Charif Souki)更熟悉墨西哥烤肉，但如今他经营总部位于休斯敦的公司Cheniere Energy，该公司有望成为第一家从美国本土出口天然气的公司。

Bucking conventional wisdom is always risky, and many would-be mavericks in finance and the energy industry have failed. But corporate caution and complacency have their costs too, and today's emphasis on short-term performance means that executives are even less likely to take long-term risks, to anticipate the unexpected. For the next great business revolution, it would be smart to bet once again on stubborn, flamboyant dreamers.

挑战传统智慧总是充满风险的，在金融和能源行业，许多想要特立独行的人都失败了。但一些企业的谨慎和自大也是有代价的，如今，对短期业绩的强调导致企业高管越发不愿承担长期风险和面对意外情况。在下一场商业大革命中，明智的做法是再度押注执着、自负的梦想家。