I’m Eric Ries, author of “The Lean Startup” and new book “Incorruptible” – AMA

Title: 我是 Eric Ries，《精益创业》及新书《不可腐蚀》(Incorruptible) 的作者——AMA（问我任何事）

Hey gang, you may remember me from such books as The Lean Startup and The Startup Way. 嘿，各位，你们可能还记得我写的《精益创业》(The Lean Startup) 和《创业之道》(The Startup Way) 等书。

It’s been fifteen years since I wrote The Lean Startup, and in that time I’ve seen some things. In both big companies and tiny startups, NGOs and governments, in almost every industry you can name. 距离我写《精益创业》已经过去十五年了，在这段时间里，我见识了不少事情。无论是在大公司还是微型初创企业，在非政府组织还是政府部门，几乎涵盖了你能说出的每一个行业。

I’ve helped a lot of people create a lot of amazing companies, but I’ve also seen so many ways this can go wrong. There’s a darkness in our industry that we often don’t talk about. 我帮助过许多人创建了许多了不起的公司，但也见证了许多事情走向失败的方式。在我们的行业中，存在着一种我们往往避而不谈的阴暗面。

I kept watching good companies drift away from the missions they were founded on. Not because anyone woke up one day and decided to be evil, but because the structure they were built on slowly pulled them there. I call that pull “financial gravity.” 我不断观察到优秀的公司逐渐偏离了它们创立时的使命。这并不是因为某天有人醒来决定作恶，而是因为它们赖以建立的结构在缓慢地将它们拉向那个方向。我将这种拉力称为“金融引力”。

We’ve all experienced watching a company we love or admire be warped and broken beyond recognition; until it’s a husk of its former self, or worse. I wanted to understand why. And I wanted to know what all of us can do to stop that from happening. 我们都曾经历过看着一家我们热爱或钦佩的公司被扭曲、被破坏到面目全非；直到它只剩下昔日的躯壳，甚至更糟。我想了解原因，也想知道我们所有人能做些什么来阻止这种情况发生。

My new book Incorruptible is my attempt to explain the invisible forces that shape organizations, and how a handful of companies (like Costco, Patagonia, and Novo Nordisk) have successfully been structured to resist gravity and thrive for decades — or even centuries. 我的新书《不可腐蚀》(Incorruptible) 是我试图解释塑造组织的无形力量，以及少数几家公司（如 Costco、Patagonia 和诺和诺德）是如何成功地通过结构设计来抵御引力，并繁荣发展数十年甚至数百年的。

Along the way, I founded the Long-Term Stock Exchange, co-founded an AI R&D lab called Answer.AI with Jeremy Howard, and helped a number of notable companies with their governance (yes, including Anthropic). 在此过程中，我创立了长期证券交易所 (Long-Term Stock Exchange)，与 Jeremy Howard 共同创立了名为 Answer.AI 的人工智能研发实验室，并帮助了许多知名公司进行治理（是的，包括 Anthropic）。

I won’t pretend I have this all figured out, but I’ve probably spent more time than is healthy on the “why do good companies go bad” question. Ask me anything! 我不会假装我已经完全弄明白了这一切，但我可能在“为什么好公司会变坏”这个问题上花费了超出健康范围的时间。问我任何事吧！

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mehulashah: Eric - I’ve worked for NASA, ATT, IBM, HP, Amazon, and Google, not to mention a couple of startups that I started in between. None of them (except the startups, but they were brief) stayed true to their original mission. I haven’t read your new book, but IMO, it’s because the founders leave and the next leadership don’t share the vision or values of the founders in the same way. After all, a company is a collaboration among people who want to make a contribution. When the people change, the company changes. It’s inevitable. mehulashah： Eric，我曾在 NASA、AT&T、IBM、惠普、亚马逊和谷歌工作过，更不用说中间我还创办过几家初创公司。它们中没有一家（除了初创公司，但它们都很短暂）能始终坚守最初的使命。我还没读过你的新书，但在我看来，这是因为创始人离开了，而后续的领导层并没有以同样的方式认同创始人的愿景或价值观。毕竟，公司是人们为了做出贡献而进行的协作。当人变了，公司也就变了。这是不可避免的。

That said, you seem to have archetypes above Costco, Patagonia, and Novo Nordisk that avoided it. Can you comment on not what it takes to build such a company, but rather how to transform companies like those that I worked for into ones that resist gravity? Or is it too late? 话虽如此，你上面提到的 Costco、Patagonia 和诺和诺德似乎是避免了这种情况的典范。你能评论一下，不是如何建立这样的公司，而是如何将像我工作过的那种公司转型为能够抵御引力的公司吗？还是说已经太晚了？

eries: One of the sad truths that the book tries to confront about the world we live in today: that most companies simply fail the test of succession. This does not have to be the reality that we live in. It is absolutely 100% possible to build organizations to resist gravity and even to transform organizations that have fallen into its clutches. The fact that this is rare tells you something about the incentive design and values of our current financial system. This is not a law of nature. eries： 这本书试图直面我们当今世界的一个悲哀事实：大多数公司在继任测试中失败了。但这不必成为我们生活的现实。完全有可能建立能够抵御引力的组织，甚至可以改造那些已经陷入引力魔爪的组织。这种情况之所以罕见，说明了我们当前金融系统的激励设计和价值观存在问题。这不是自然规律。

I don’t really think there’s a short way for me to answer this question without having to summarize the entire book. This is what it’s about. I’ll simply say that the second part of the book, what I call “The Blueprint,” is about both the governance and leadership tools that we have available to us to turn these organizations into the long-term, mission-driven, incorruptible places we all want to work at. 我不认为我不总结整本书就能简短地回答这个问题。这就是书的核心内容。我只想说，书的第二部分，我称之为“蓝图”(The Blueprint)，讲述了我们可用的治理和领导力工具，这些工具可以将这些组织转变为我们都想工作的、长期的、使命驱动的、不可腐蚀的地方。