TED演讲:怎样让企业持续运行100年(4)
Let’s come back to our tech CEO’s question.
再来说说科技公司老板的问题
Where better to turn for advice than nature,
哪里有向比大自然求教更好的呢？
that’s been in the business of life and death for longer than any company?
大自然已经在生死轮回的游戏中比任何公司存活得都要久了
As a lapsed biologist, I decided to immediately call a real biologist,
作为一个不务正业的生物学家，我马上联系了一个更专业的生物学者
my friend Simon Levin, Professor of Biology and Mathematics at Princeton University.
我朋友赛门·莱文，普林斯顿大学的生物学和数学教授
Together, we looked at a variety of biological systems,
我们共同研究了许多生态系统
ranging from natural tropical rainforests through to managed forests and fisheries.
从自然热带雨林到人造森林和鱼塘
And we asked ourselves the question: What makes these systems resilient and enduring?
我们问了自己一个问题：是什么使这些系统具有抗压能力和持续性
And what we found was that the same six principles that we saw underpinning the miracle of the human immune system
我们发现恰恰是支撑着人体免疫系统的六条规律，
actually cropped up again and again, from redundancy through to embeddedness.
从庞大性到镶嵌性一次又一次地表现出来。
In fact, we saw these principles not only in biologically enduring systems,
事实上，我们不只是在生物持久的系统中发现这些规律
we also found them being very characteristic of long-lived social systems,
我们还发现它们在寿命长久的社会系统中也表现得十分突出
like the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church, believe it or not.
就像在罗马帝国和天主教堂中的表现，信不信由你。
We also went on to look at business,
我们还研究了商界
and found that these very same properties also characterized businesses that were resilient and long-lived,
也发现它们在坚韧且长久的企业中表现的非常明显
and we noted their absence from ones which were short-lived.
并且发现了短命的企业中这种品质的缺失
Let’s first take a look at what happens when the corporate immune system collapses.
先来看看当企业的免疫机制失效时会发生什么
把自己想象成一个产品设计师。你设计了一种产品，一种叫做人体免疫机制的新产品。