当代最伟大的12位企业家

5. 拉里•佩奇和谢尔盖•布林

公司名称：谷歌

销售额：379亿美元

市值：2,032亿美元

员工人数：32,500

建议：创新不计成本

    保罗•麦卡特尼自称曾梦到《Yesterday》（这首唱片史上被翻唱最多的歌曲之一）的曲调。无独有偶，拉里•佩奇也记得1996年的那个夜晚，当时他才23岁，真真切切地梦到将整个网络下载到了电脑中。“我抓起一支笔，开始写下来，”谷歌共同创始人兼首席执行官佩奇称。“我半夜里爬起来写下了细节，自信这个点子行得通。”

    当然行得通了。2011年第四季度，谷歌（Google）的季度营收首次突破100亿美元。每天全世界使用谷歌搜索的次数达到了惊人的25亿次。但在所有这些令人惊异的数据中，不得不提的或许是谷歌的无处不在。还有一项数据可能更能说明问题：39岁的佩奇和共同创始人38岁的谢尔盖•布林过去三年的研发投入总计达到了118亿美元。

    如此巨大的投入推动了无以伦比的创新，使得谷歌在搜索引擎领域遥遥领先。公司规模不断扩大的同时如何保持创新，这往往是所有成长型公司最难逾越的障碍。对于去年成为首席执行官的佩奇而言，这可以归结为他们所谓的70-20-10法则。

    “大约70%的人从事公司核心业务，”布林解释称。“约20%的人从事邻近领域和业务扩张，10%的人做其他任何事情。随着我们产品宽度的日益拓展，那10%越来越难找到。但我相信这很重要——让人们保持创造力，跳出条条框框。”

5. Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Company: Google

Sales: $37.9 billion

Market Value: $203.2 billion

Employees: 32,500

Advice: Spare no expense on innovation.

    Just like Paul McCartney, who says he literally dreamed the melody to "Yesterday," one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music, Larry Page recalls the night in 1996 when he was 23 years old and had vividly dreamed about downloading the entire web onto computers. "I grabbed a pen and started writing," says Google co-founder and CEO Page. "I spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work."

    It certainly did. For the first time ever, in the final three months of 2011, Google exceeded $10 billion in quarterly revenue. Every day people around the world now use Google for an astounding 2.5 billion searches. But in all the gee-whiz statistics one could cite about the ubiquity of the company on the web, one statistic is even more telling: Page, 39, and co-founder Sergey Brin, 38, have spent $11.8 billion on research and development in the past three years.

    That money fuels an innovation machine second to none, one that has moved Google well beyond its dominating lead in the search engine business. Staying innovative while scaling into a behemoth organization is often the most difficult passage for any growth company. For Page, who became CEO last year, and Brin, it comes down to what they call the 70-20-10 rule.

    "About 70% try to work on the core efforts of the company," explains Brin, "about 20% goes to adjacent areas and expansion, and for the 10%, anything goes. As we have expanded our breadth of offerings, it's actually harder and harder to find the 10% out there. But I think that's important -- to let people be really creative and think outside the box."