【雙語閱讀】讓動(dòng)物啟示人類合作.

　　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(xué)到什么重要的東西嗎?律師們的舉止與貓鼬這種不穿衣服的田鼠相似嗎?這個(gè)問題聽起來就像一個(gè)酒吧笑話的開場(chǎng)白。但實(shí)際上并非如此，如果你信任資深英國(guó)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(yè)生涯的前30年里，克里斯普在倫敦金融城(City of London)擔(dān)任資深律師，升遷到受人尊敬的富而德律師事務(wù)所(Freshfields Law Firm)管理合伙人的神圣職位。但近來，克里斯普換了個(gè)職業(yè)，到牛津大學(xué)賽德商學(xué)院(Said Business School)教授商業(yè)、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(xué)的動(dòng)物學(xué)家們進(jìn)行頭腦風(fēng)暴，以分析一家21世紀(jì)全球律所的成功秘訣。尤其是，克里斯普相信，貓鼬這種不穿衣服的田鼠、甚至蜜蜂的行為能給企業(yè)界提供大量的借鑒。

　　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.

　　盡管21世紀(jì)的學(xué)生傾向于假定，現(xiàn)代經(jīng)濟(jì)生活(像動(dòng)物王國(guó)一樣)的驅(qū)動(dòng)力是個(gè)體的求生本能和盈利動(dòng)機(jī)，但克里斯普認(rèn)為這一假定是錯(cuò)誤的。相反，正如他上周向我解釋的那樣，只有當(dāng)存在通力合作和團(tuán)隊(duì)精神時(shí)，律師事務(wù)所才能運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)得起來。他補(bǔ)充道，團(tuán)隊(duì)精神也廣泛地存在于動(dòng)物王國(guó)中，尤其是在貓鼬等動(dòng)物當(dāng)中。借助《行為生態(tài)學(xué)入門》(An Introduction to Behavioral Ecology)這本書，他正向攻讀商業(yè)和法律的學(xué)生傳達(dá)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&aposs fort 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(duì)人類律師來說)。然而，作為一個(gè)更大趨勢(shì)的一部分，它也值得一提?？死锼蛊瞻褎?dòng)物學(xué)應(yīng)用到商科教育的努力，可被形容為一種"打破藩籬"的形式。"打破藩籬"是指吸收機(jī)構(gòu)內(nèi)某一部門或者學(xué)術(shù)領(lǐng)域積累的知識(shí)，然后將其應(yīng)用到其他領(lǐng)域的藝術(shù)。放眼當(dāng)今的學(xué)術(shù)界和商界，你會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)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&aposs 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 dinitions of research and entrepreneurship.

　　比如上個(gè)月，我遇到了幾位芝加哥大學(xué)的高級(jí)官員，他們解釋說，他們正費(fèi)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(chuàng)業(yè)"課程的學(xué)生開展合作。在阿斯彭理念節(jié)(Aspen Ideas festival)上，我聽到了來自麻省理工學(xué)院(MIT)媒體實(shí)驗(yàn)室主管伊藤穰一(Joi Ito)的精彩演講：源于建筑系的這項(xiàng)倡議，旨在力推不同類型的研究人員和創(chuàng)業(yè)者相互切磋?；蛘哒缫撂兖σ凰f，這一努力"與其說是跨學(xué)科的，不如說是反學(xué)科的"，因?yàn)樗蚱屏搜芯颗c創(chuàng)業(yè)的傳統(tǒng)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(jī)構(gòu)也在采取類似的行動(dòng)，比如弗吉尼亞州喬治梅森大學(xué)(George Mason University)的克拉斯洛高等研究院(Krasnow Institute)，更別提圣達(dá)菲學(xué)院(Santa Fe Institute)或帕洛阿爾托研究中心(Palo Alto Research Center)等歷史更悠久的研究中心了。有些基金會(huì)，比如阿爾福萊德 P 斯隆基金會(huì)(Alfred P. Sloan Foundation)，也在資助打破藩籬方面的研究：該基金會(huì)最近的一個(gè)項(xiàng)目就是讓海洋生物學(xué)家與計(jì)算機(jī)程序員進(jìn)行合作，創(chuàng)建一種用于追蹤海洋生物的" 谷歌魚"(Google fish)系統(tǒng)。

　　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，你可以說這種行為只是表面現(xiàn)象，或只是一個(gè)統(tǒng)計(jì)偏差。畢竟，對(duì)于如今大學(xué)、政府部門和企業(yè)中的每一個(gè)"打破藩籬"的例子，人們都能找出無數(shù)反例與之對(duì)應(yīng)，證明"穴"底之見和同族意識(shí)仍是主流，其影響力或許還在增強(qiáng)。多數(shù)學(xué)術(shù)生涯乃至研究資助的架構(gòu)，都會(huì)強(qiáng)化學(xué)科之間的"藩籬";政府和企業(yè)機(jī)構(gòu)的技術(shù)操作日趨復(fù)雜，往往增強(qiáng)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(jīng)濟(jì)不景氣的時(shí)候，這兩樣往往都沒有。

　　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(jī)構(gòu)。在英國(guó)央行(BoE)，安迪 霍爾丹(Andy Haldane)等經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家曾與羅伯特 梅(Robert May)等動(dòng)物學(xué)家合作，共同研究金融穩(wěn)定性問題。在布里斯托爾大學(xué)(Bristol University)和卡內(nèi)基梅隆大學(xué)(Carnegie-Mellon university)，研究人員們正與一些軍方人員一道研究核科學(xué)與金融市場(chǎng)之間的相似之處。在長(zhǎng)島的冷泉港實(shí)驗(yàn)室(Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)，一群統(tǒng)計(jì)學(xué)家、經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家和醫(yī)學(xué)研究人員最近在進(jìn)行頭腦風(fēng)暴，試圖找出衡量與應(yīng)對(duì)癌癥護(hù)理的創(chuàng)新途徑。而這些不過是我所了解的例子，其他例子無疑也是數(shù)不勝數(shù)的。

　　But there again, history suggests that the most powerful forms of innovation tend to happen when silo busting does occur. What dines 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&aposs 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(jīng)驗(yàn)似乎表明，最有影響力的創(chuàng)新往往誕生于"藩籬"被打破之時(shí)。集體或個(gè)人是否會(huì)成功，取決于人是被"藩籬"掌控和框死、還是能夠在有需要和機(jī)會(huì)的時(shí)候掌控和重組原有的結(jié)構(gòu)。因此，比方說我就認(rèn)為，克里斯普有關(guān)貓鼬以及動(dòng)物學(xué)其他方面的知識(shí)探索值得贊賞，他在從事律師30年后轉(zhuǎn)而做這樣的研究更是難能可貴。這些哺乳動(dòng)物是不是真能教給律師一些東西，誰知道呢?但我們都應(yīng)帶著新鮮的眼光來觀察世界。真的，從這個(gè)角度來說，我樂于知道更多個(gè)人或機(jī)構(gòu)正試圖"打破藩籬"的例子，即便沒有任何其他收獲，至少也有一樣：這樣的例子可能有助于拓寬我自己的思維，使其跳出媒體世界。這甚至不需要我研究什么田鼠。