他她話題:讓動物啓示人類合作
Do lawyers have something important to learn from meerkats? Is their behaviour similar to that of the naked vole rat? That question might sound like the preamble to a bar joke. But not so, if Hugh Crisp, a veteran English lawyer is to be believed.
律師能向貓鼬學到什麼重要的東西嗎？律師們的舉止與貓鼬這種不穿衣服的田鼠相似嗎？這個問題聽起來就像一個酒吧笑話的開場白。但實際上並非如此，如果你信任資深英國律師休•克里斯普(Hugh Crisp)的話。For the first 30 years of his career, Crisp worked as a senior City of London lawyer, rising to the hallowed position of managing partner of the esteemed Freshfields law firm. But these days, Crisp has moved into a new career, teaching business, law and management skills at the Said Business School in Oxford. And that has prompted him to take an unusual track: these days he is brainstorming with zoologists at Oxford university, to analyse the secrets of what makes a 21st-century global law firm work. In particular, Crisp is convinced that the behaviour of naked vole rats, meerkats or even bees can shed a great deal of light on corporate life.
在職業生涯的前30年裏，克里斯普在倫敦金融城(City of London)擔任資深律師，升遷到受人尊敬的富而德律師事務所(Freshfields Law Firm)管理合夥人的神聖職位。但近來，克里斯普換了個職業，到牛津大學賽德商學院(Said Business School)教授商業、法律和管理技能課程。這讓他闖出了一條不尋常的道路：最近，他在與牛津大學的動物學家們進行頭腦風暴，以分析一家21世紀全球律所的成功祕訣。尤其是，克里斯普相信，貓鼬這種不穿衣服的田鼠、甚至蜜蜂的行爲能給企業界提供大量的借鑑。While 21st-century students tend to presume that modern economic life (like the animal kingdom) is driven by an individualistic survival instinct and profit motive, Crisp thinks this assumption is wrong. Instead, as he explained to me last week, law firms only work if there is an intense collaboration and group spirit. He adds that this spirit is widely found in the animal kingdom too, particularly among creatures such as the meerkat. Armed with a copy of a book called An Introduction to Behavioral Ecology, this is the message he is trying to teach to business and law students.
儘管21世紀的學生傾向於假定，現代經濟生活（像動物王國一樣）的驅動力是個體的求生本能和盈利動機，但克里斯普認爲這一假定是錯誤的。相反，正如他上週向我解釋的那樣，只有當存在通力合作和團隊精神時，律師事務所才能運轉得起來。他補充道，團隊精神也廣泛地存在於動物王國中，尤其是在貓鼬等動物當中。藉助《行爲生態學入門》(An Introduction to Behavioral Ecology)這本書，他正向攻讀商業和法律的學生傳達這一信息。
As endeavours go, this one is fascinating in its own right (even, or especially, for human lawyers). However, it is also noteworthy as part of a much bigger trend. One way to describe Crisp's effort to apply zoology to business education is that it is a form of "silo busting" - the art of taking insights that have been developed in one institutional department or intellectual silo, and applying them somewhere else. If you look across the academic world these days, as well as in corporate life, it seems that silo busting is becoming all the rage.
就努力而言，這一努力本身就是引人入勝的（甚至——或者說尤其——對人類律師來說）。然而，作爲一個更大趨勢的一部分，它也值得一提。克里斯普把動物學應用到商科教育的努力，可被形容爲一種"打破藩籬"的形式。"打破藩籬"是指吸收機構內某一部門或者學術領域積累的知識，然後將其應用到其他領域的藝術。放眼當今的學術界和商界，你會發現打破藩籬似乎正大行其道。Last month for example, I met senior officials from Chicago university who explained how they are scrambling to force different departments to collaborate with each other and, in particular, with the students who are studying at the university's wildly popular "entrepreneurship" course. At the Aspen Ideas festival, I listened to fascinating presentations from Joi Ito, head of the MIT Media Lab: this initiative, which grew out of the architecture department, aims to force different types of researchers and entrepreneurs to collide with each other. Or as Ito says, the endeavour that is "not so much interdisciplinary, but anti-disciplinary", since it busts traditional definitions of research and entrepreneurship.
比如上個月，我遇到了幾位芝加哥大學的高級官員，他們解釋說，他們正費盡心思迫使不同的院系開展合作，尤其是與該校深受歡迎的"創業"課程的學生開展合作。在阿斯彭理念節(Aspen Ideas festival)上，我聽到了來自麻省理工學院(MIT)媒體實驗室主管伊藤穰一(Joi Ito)的精彩演講：源於建築系的這項倡議，旨在力推不同類型的研究人員和創業者相互切磋。或者正如伊藤穰一所說，這一努力"與其說是跨學科的，不如說是反學科的"，因爲它打破了研究與創業的傳統定義。Similar initiatives are under way elsewhere, such as the Krasnow Institute at the George Mason University in Virginia, not to mention longer-standing centres such as the Santa Fe Institute or Palo Alto Research Centre. Some foundations, such as the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, are also funding silo-busting research: one recent case from Sloan is an initiative to combine the work of marine biologists with computer programmers to create a sort of "Google fish" system for tracking sea life.
其他機構也在採取類似的行動，比如弗吉尼亞州喬治梅森大學(George Mason University)的克拉斯洛高等研究院(Krasnow Institute)，更別提聖達菲學院(Santa Fe Institute)或帕洛阿爾託研究中心(Palo Alto Research Center)等歷史更悠久的研究中心了。有些基金會，比如阿爾福萊德•P•斯隆基金會(Alfred P. Sloan Foundation)，也在資助打破藩籬方面的研究：該基金會最近的一個項目就是讓海洋生物學家與計算機程序員進行合作，創建一種用於追蹤海洋生物的"谷歌魚"(Google fish)系統。Silo busting is spreading into institutional quarters as well. At the Bank of England, economists such as Andy Haldane have collaborated with zoologists such as Robert May to study financial stability. At Bristol University and Carnegie Mellon, researchers are studying the parallels between nuclear science and financial markets, in tandem with some military groups. At the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, there have recently been brainstorming sessions between statisticians, economists and medical researchers to develop innovative ways to measure and tackle cancer care. And these are just the examples I know of - countless others undoubtedly exist, too.
打破藩籬的做法也正在蔓延至其他類型的機構。在英國央行(BoE)，安迪•霍爾丹(Andy Haldane)等經濟學家曾與羅伯特•梅(Robert May)等動物學家合作，共同研究金融穩定性問題。在布裏斯托爾大學(Bristol University)和卡內基梅隆大學(Carnegie-Mellon university)，研究人員們正與一些軍方人員一道研究核科學與金融市場之間的相似之處。在長島的冷泉港實驗室(Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)，一羣統計學家、經濟學家和醫學研究人員最近在進行頭腦風暴，試圖找出衡量與應對癌症護理的創新途徑。而這些不過是我所瞭解的例子，其他例子無疑也是數不勝數的。If you want to be cynical, it is possible to argue that some of this activity is mere tokenism, or just a statistical aberration. After all, for every example of "silo jumping" occurring in a university, government department or company today, there are numerous counter examples, where tunnel vision and tribalism predominate, and may be growing in power. The structure of most academic careers and research grants reinforces intellectual silos, and the growing complexity of technical operations in government and corporate bureaucracies tends to give "specialists" entrenched power. If employees or researchers are going to jump across boundaries, they need resources, or "slack", and that tends to vanish at times of economic pain.
如果你要扮演懷疑人士的角色，你可以說這種行爲只是表面現象，或只是一個統計偏差。畢竟，對於如今大學、政府部門和企業中的每一個"打破藩籬"的例子，人們都能找出無數反例與之對應，證明"穴"底之見和同族意識仍是主流，其影響力或許還在增強。多數學術生涯乃至研究資助的架構，都會強化學科之間的"藩籬"；政府和企業機構的技術操作日趨複雜，往往增強了"專家"不可或缺的地位。如果員工或研究者打算"打破藩籬"，他們需要資源，或"空間"，而在經濟不景氣的時候，這兩樣往往都沒有。But there again, history suggests that the most powerful forms of innovation tend to happen when silo busting does occur. What defines whether a group or individual will be successful is whether somebody is mastered and trapped by silos - or can master and reorder them as needs and opportunities arise. So I, for one, applaud Crisp's intellectual exploration with meerkats, and other aspects of zoology, particularly after his three-decade career. Who knows whether those mammals really can teach lawyers something; but we all have reason to look at the world with fresh eyes. Indeed, in that spirit I would love to hear of any other examples where individuals or institutions are trying to "silo bust"; if nothing else, it could help broaden my own mind beyond the media world. Even without any vole rats.
但在這方面，歷史經驗似乎表明，最有影響力的創新往往誕生於"藩籬"被打破之時。集體或個人是否會成功，取決於人是被"藩籬"掌控和框死、還是能夠在有需要和機會的時候掌控和重組原有的結構。因此，比方說我就認爲，克里斯普有關貓鼬以及動物學其他方面的知識探索值得讚賞，他在從事律師30年後轉而做這樣的研究更是難能可貴。這些哺乳動物是不是真能教給律師一些東西，誰知道呢？但我們都應帶着新鮮的眼光來觀察世界。真的，從這個角度來說，我樂於知道更多個人或機構正試圖"打破藩籬"的例子，即便沒有任何其他收穫，至少也有一樣：這樣的例子可能有助於拓寬我自己的思維，使其跳出媒體世界。這甚至不需要我研究什麼田鼠。
