Theranos被打回原型，企业家造神运动能否终结？

偶像化：动词，指对某人或某物像神一样崇拜，或过于爱慕。

人们总是倾向于把英雄人物偶像化，这一现象并不新鲜。不管是对政客、商人、运动员还是对娱乐界名人，我们总会把那些我们喜欢的人上升到天神一般的高度。而如果他们没能满足我们不切实际的预期时，我们又会毫不犹豫地把他们掀下神坛。这之间的差距何止以千里计。

在明星还是稀罕物的年代，这也不算是个问题。但是在社交媒体每周7天、全天24小时狂轰滥炸的当下，我们对于偶像——特别是企业家偶像的崇拜——几乎已经到了疯狂的地步。我甚至不敢肯定人们是否分辨得出哪些是真正的企业家，哪些是冒牌货。然而对此，有些人甚至根本不在乎。

在我们的推波助澜下，这边一波造神运动方兴未艾，那边一波偶像已被打回原型。偶像们的起起落落只是造福了媒体，对我们普通百姓没有半分好处。恰恰相反，这种造神文化只是教给后来的一代人：办企业的奖赏只是昙花一现的盛名，而不是长期的成功。

以Theranos公司的CEO伊莉莎白•霍尔姆斯为例。这家硅谷创业公司十年默默无人闻，一朝成名天下知——凭借的一是高达90亿美元的天价估值；二是与连锁药店巨头沃尔格林（Walgreens）的全面合作；三是其仅凭几滴血液几乎就能立时检查出多种疾病的豪言。

然而实际上，狂甩7.5亿美元的投资者们从来没有检验过Theranos的技术，该技术也从未登上过生物医药学的期刊以接受同行的评审。不过霍尔默斯还是有自己的办法的，她那套“现实扭曲力场”的功夫丝毫不输苹果公司的某位联合创始人，使审查变成了一件没必要的事。在媒体的热炒下，她一夜之间成了一名炙手可热的创业偶像。

霍尔默斯的逆天颜值也登上了《福布斯》（Forbes）的封面。《财富》（Fortune）干脆称她为“下一个乔布斯”。一个19岁少女从斯坦福退学创业、热情致力于改变世界的故事，也在《纽约客》（New Yorker）和《纽约时报》（New York Times）等各大媒体上广为传播。她还受到了知名主持人查理•罗斯的专访，获得了佩珀代因大学（Pepperdine）的名誉博士学位，并且被提名为哈佛医学院（Harvard Medical School）研究员理事会成员。

当然，想必你并非生活在一个没有Wi-Fi的环境，所以接下来的故事你一定已经听说了：曾两次获得普利策奖的《华尔街日报》（Wall Street Journal）调查记者约翰•凯瑞伊欧先是抛出了一篇极有份量的头版文章，随后又凭借一系列后续报道戳破了霍尔姆斯吹出的大泡泡，撕碎了Theranos的神秘面纱。

联邦监管机构突击检查了该公司的实验室，发现该公司的技术方法、人员和测试结果的准确性都存在严重问题。Theranos随后宣布其专利产品“爱迪生”验血机近两年测试的数万份血样报告全部作废。该公司的加州实验室有可能被吊销联邦执照，而霍尔姆斯本人可能将面临为期两年的行业禁令。

当然，两年前疯狂吹捧霍尔姆斯和她的“独角兽”公司的那一干媒体们，现在完全转变了态度。其中有一篇文章尤其吸引了我的注意。

本周一，《华盛顿邮报》（the Washington Post ）发表了一篇题为《Theranos在责任方面给硅谷上了沉重的一课》的文章。文中，耶鲁大学（Yale）教授杰佛里•索南菲尔德和斯坦福大学（Stanford）研究员维维克•瓦德哈认为，Theranos公司及其董事会以及霍尔姆斯本人，乃至整个硅谷，在企业治理方面的长期缺位，是导致这场悲剧的一个重要原因。

“硅谷经常以为自己可以按照有别于美国企业界的另一套规则生存……的确，我们需要允许企业家承担一些风险、打破一些规则，使他们发挥自己的‘魔力’。但这些规则绝不能是道德规则。道德底线一贯是清楚的，对于Theranos也是一样，不能有任何妥协。”

这两位知名学者就将来如何避免此类事件重演给出了建议：“要积极地去质疑那些被过度炒作的创业者。比如众所周知，Theranos的CEO经常利用媒体为其背书，通过自夸的宣传资料谋求知名度，或是以所谓‘搅局者’的身份参与TED演讲，出现在欢呼盲从的观众面前。”

然而，在Theranos的丑闻爆出之前，在满天飞舞的各类马屁文章中，还曾经有过这样一篇文章，名为《伊莉莎白•霍尔姆斯：硅谷最新的一个现象级人物》，该文载于2014年的《圣荷西信使报》（San Jose Mercury News ），文章里写了这样一段话：

“斯坦福大学及杜克大学教授兼研究员、企业家精神讲师维维克•瓦德哈认为：‘她可能就是硅谷等待已久的女版马克•扎克伯格。她从年轻时就开始创业，克服各种困难，打造了一种优秀的技术，从而造福全世界。’”

是的，文中的这位瓦德哈，正是《华盛顿邮报》那篇批判文章的作者瓦德哈。我们总是喜欢在人家得势时大肆吹捧，在人家失势时站在道德高地上怒吼猛批，有些人更是顺风倒的墙头草，正说反说都有理。怎一个虚伪了得！

我的观点是：企业家拿出金钱和身家来创业，是值得大力表扬的，但是将企业家偶像化的做法——哪怕是真正的偶像企业家——也是十分愚蠢的。因为他们每个人的特点是无法被简单模仿的。如果你想成就伟大的事业，首先必须做真实的自己，开创一条自己的路。真正的企业家只领导，不跟随。

这个世界不需要更多的“他们”，而是需要更多的“你”。 （财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

IDOLIZE verb : to worship as a god; to love or admire to excess

We have a tendency to idolize our heroes. That’s nothing new. Whether it’s in politics, business, sports or entertainment, we hoist those we admire up on impossibly high pedestals, and when they fail to meet our lofty expectations, we don’t hesitate to knock them right off. It’s a long way down.

This wasn’t a problem back in the days when stars were few and far between, but in the modern era of an insatiable 24/7 social media circus, we’re obsessing over icons – entrepreneurial ones, in particular – at a frantic rate. And I’m not at all sure we can tell the genuine ones from the fake ones – or that we even care anymore.

While the fanatical zeal with which we build up and knock down the objects of our adulation may be a boon for the media, it doesn’t benefit the rest of us one bit. Rather, this idol-worshipping culture is teaching a generation of up-and-comers that the prize of business is fleeting fame, not long-term success.

Take Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes. The Silicon Valley startup emerged from a decade in stealth mode with a whopping $9 billion valuation, a monster deal with pharmacy giant Walgreens, and bold claims of a breakthrough that could deliver close to real-time diagnostics from a few drops of blood.

Never mind that Theranos’ technology had never been vetted by the investors who ponied up $750 million or published in peer-reviewed biomedical journals. Holmes had a way about her, a reality distortion field not unlike that of a certain Apple co-founder, which made scrutiny seem superfluous. And she was hailed as an instant entrepreneurial icon by a gushing media.

Holmes’ stunning visage appeared on the cover of Forbes and Fortune. Inc. flat out called her “The next Steve Jobs.” The seductive story of a 19-year-old Stanford dropout with the vision and passion to change the world appeared everywhere from the New Yorker to the New York Times. She was interviewed by Charlie Rose, awarded an honorary doctorate from Pepperdine and named to the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows.

Of course, you’d have to be living under a rock with no Wi-Fi to have missed what happened next. John Carreyrou, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter from the Wall Street Journal burst Holmes’ pristine bubble with a front page expose and a series of damning reports that shredded Theranos’ veil of secrecy.

Federal regulators descended on the company’s labs and found serious issues with its methods, its personnel and the accuracy of its test results. Theranos has since voided two-years and tens of thousands of blood tests taken from its proprietary Edison tester. Its California lab may lose its federal license and Holmes faces a potential two-year ban from the industry.

Of course, the same publications that fawned all over Holmes and her marvelous unicorn two years ago have taken a decidedly different position now. One in particular caught my attention.

On Monday, the Washington Post ran an op-ed called “Theranos teaches Silicon Valley a hard lesson about accountability” in which Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Stanford fellow Vivek Wadha skewer Theranos, Holmes, the company’s board and Silicon Valley for chronic lapses in corporate governance:

‘Silicon Valley often thinks that it can live by a different set of rules than corporate America … Yes, we need to allow entrepreneurs to take risks and break some rules so that they can do their magic. But these rules cannot be ethical ones. The lines on ethics are usually clear as they were with Theranos and there can be no compromise.’

These noble academics then sought to impart a lesson in how to avoid this sort of thing in the future. “Question the over-hyped founders,” they write. “Theranos’s CEO notoriously chased testimonial media appearances self-aggrandizing promotional materials and strutted before cheering and unquestioning audiences of wannabe disrupters at TED-talks.”

But here’s the thing. Before all this nasty stuff came out about Theranos, among the myriad of fluff pieces from back in 2014 was a San Jose Mercury News article called “Meet Elizabeth Holmes, Silicon Valley’s latest phenom,” which included the following:

‘She may be the female Mark Zuckerberg that Silicon Valley has been waiting for,’ said Vivek Wadhwa, a professor and researcher at Stanford and Duke and a lecturer on entrepreneurship. ‘She started when she was young, defied the odds and built a great technology, and is doing good for the world.’

Yes, that is the same Vivek Wadhwa who coauthored the Washington Post piece. Not only do we aggrandize entrepreneurs who simply look and act the part and claim moral outrage when they fail to deliver the goods, some of us even have the stones to have it both ways. Hypocrisy at its best.

The point is this. Entrepreneurs deserve tons of credit for putting their bucks and their butts on the line, but idolizing them – even the real ones – is foolish. You can’t copy and paste what makes them unique. It simply doesn’t work that way. If you want to do great work, you have to be your own genuine self and create your own path. Real entrepreneurs don’t follow. They lead.

The world doesn’t need more of them. The world needs more of you.