10年前，創(chuàng)新者開(kāi)始把顛覆作為前進(jìn)口號(hào),，并引用《孫子兵法》中的觀點(diǎn)加以佐證,。這批剛剛出現(xiàn)的顛覆者把這本中國(guó)古典哲學(xué)著作奉為起步指南。

借鑒中國(guó)古典哲學(xué)是對(duì)的,，但他們找錯(cuò)了書(shū),。

其實(shí)，另一部中國(guó)古典著作《道德經(jīng)》提出的創(chuàng)新模式遠(yuǎn)比《孫子兵法》寬泛,，也更具革命性,。和《孫子兵法》一樣，《道德經(jīng)》也有2000多年的歷史,，其內(nèi)容神妙莫測(cè),，發(fā)人深省。它同樣告訴人們看似弱小的一方如何以弱勝?gòu)?qiáng),。不過(guò),，二者相似之處也只有這一點(diǎn)。

《孫子兵法》認(rèn)為,，不循規(guī)蹈矩,，采取出人意料的策略，軍事將領(lǐng)就可以戰(zhàn)勝看似處于優(yōu)勢(shì)地位的對(duì)手——商業(yè)領(lǐng)袖也是如此,，就像大衛(wèi)用不起眼的彈弓來(lái)對(duì)付笨重呆滯的歌利亞,。不過(guò)，《孫子兵法》認(rèn)為,，顛覆者必須考慮戰(zhàn)場(chǎng)實(shí)際地形等因素,，而且要采取穩(wěn)定且一致的招數(shù)對(duì)付敵人。

與之相反,，《道德經(jīng)》認(rèn)為我們不應(yīng)該在既定,、可預(yù)測(cè)的領(lǐng)域?qū)嵤﹦?chuàng)新策略，無(wú)論是戰(zhàn)場(chǎng)、餐桌,、董事會(huì)會(huì)議室還是鋼鐵行業(yè),。《道德經(jīng)》提出,，世界一直處于變化和運(yùn)動(dòng)之中,。

在大多數(shù)情況下，包括最普通的日?；顒?dòng)中,，我們都傾向于接受一個(gè)穩(wěn)定的世界。然而,，總會(huì)有一些愛(ài)抬杠的尖刻同事喜歡跟人較真兒,，傷人感情。有時(shí)候,，我們可能會(huì)用不同的方式來(lái)跟這種人打交道,。比如，態(tài)度更堅(jiān)決,，看看能不能鎮(zhèn)?。换蛘?，我們可能會(huì)按照《孫子兵法》所說(shuō),，用“以柔克剛”的手段搞定他。

《道德經(jīng)》的觀點(diǎn)則和上述兩種方法截然不同,。它的重點(diǎn)不是對(duì)立雙方的關(guān)系,，而是從大局出發(fā)，尋找改變整體局勢(shì)的方法,。結(jié)果是,，我們根本沒(méi)必要跟愛(ài)抬杠的同事較勁。關(guān)鍵在于理解一條基本原則,，就是盡管我們傾向于認(rèn)為事物都很穩(wěn)定,，因?yàn)檫@樣更容易把握，但實(shí)際上,，任何情況都源于很多不斷變化,、關(guān)系相互交織的人群之間相互作用。

我們通常都會(huì)對(duì)他人的行為做出反應(yīng),，對(duì)方也是如此,。比如，別人突然皺一下眉,，就會(huì)讓我們心情變差，和別人分享歡樂(lè)則讓我們感覺(jué)充滿(mǎn)活力。我們也會(huì)對(duì)看起來(lái)很穩(wěn)定的事物做出反應(yīng),，比如,，在一個(gè)沒(méi)有窗戶(hù)的封閉房間里呆一會(huì)就會(huì)燥熱難耐，后來(lái)跟一個(gè)重要客戶(hù)打電話(huà)結(jié)果完全沒(méi)法溝通,，覺(jué)得煩躁不已,，兩種感覺(jué)如此一致不是很正常嗎？

正是出于這個(gè)原因,，《道德經(jīng)》式的創(chuàng)新不會(huì)基于一成不變的情況,，無(wú)論是格局、關(guān)系,，還是某個(gè)行業(yè),，也不會(huì)建議在穩(wěn)定的環(huán)境下采取新策略來(lái)搞定對(duì)手。

《道德經(jīng)》式創(chuàng)新的基礎(chǔ)是認(rèn)識(shí)如果所有事物都由不斷變化的部分組成,，細(xì)微的舉動(dòng)就足以改變世界,，甚至徹底顛覆?！兜赖陆?jīng)》式創(chuàng)新者認(rèn)為,，改變可以在不知不覺(jué)中完成，新秩序會(huì)迅速成為常態(tài),。

《道德經(jīng)》式創(chuàng)新者把無(wú)為作為準(zhǔn)則：看似無(wú)所作為,，實(shí)則順勢(shì)而動(dòng)達(dá)到無(wú)不為之境。他們可能相當(dāng)積極主動(dòng),，沒(méi)準(zhǔn)相當(dāng)有勢(shì)力,，甚至可能位高權(quán)重。但他們之所以是《道德經(jīng)》式創(chuàng)新者,，原因在于他們看似在管理,，但管的并非如我們所見(jiàn)。

現(xiàn)如今,，人人會(huì)對(duì)全天候接觸新聞資訊習(xí)以為常,。但這在幾十年前還無(wú)法想象。CNN創(chuàng)始人泰德?特納改變了這一切,。他所做的不只是通過(guò)開(kāi)發(fā)技術(shù)挑戰(zhàn)當(dāng)時(shí)的媒體網(wǎng)絡(luò)及其對(duì)信息的把控,，更重要的是通過(guò)改變潛在的認(rèn)識(shí)，讓媒體網(wǎng)絡(luò)的運(yùn)營(yíng)環(huán)境發(fā)生變化,。在他創(chuàng)造的新世界中,，新聞不再屬于幾家電視臺(tái)，每天也不會(huì)只能看幾個(gè)小時(shí),，人們意識(shí)到每時(shí)每刻都應(yīng)該能看到實(shí)時(shí)新聞,。

亞馬遜也是起步于經(jīng)典的顛覆性舉動(dòng),，就是用新技術(shù)（互聯(lián)網(wǎng)和網(wǎng)站）改革以實(shí)體書(shū)店為基礎(chǔ)的圖書(shū)銷(xiāo)售行業(yè)。貝索斯沒(méi)有沉浸于一次策略成功帶來(lái)的盈利,，他不斷地進(jìn)入一個(gè)又一個(gè)行業(yè),，經(jīng)常代價(jià)慘重，有時(shí)甚至看起來(lái)很愚蠢,。

雖然表面上看,，貝索斯也許只是想顛覆更多的行業(yè)，但他真正的顛覆行為是創(chuàng)造了一個(gè)全新的世界,。在這個(gè)世界里,，所有人做任何事都要先去亞馬遜。貝索斯并不是在顛覆圖書(shū)銷(xiāo)售行業(yè),，也沒(méi)有顛覆其他行業(yè),。在他創(chuàng)造的新世界中，行業(yè)已經(jīng)沒(méi)那么重要,，因?yàn)橥ㄟ^(guò)亞馬遜的網(wǎng)站可以滿(mǎn)足大量購(gòu)物需求,。

而讓創(chuàng)新者異常強(qiáng)大的一點(diǎn)是，我們進(jìn)入由他人開(kāi)創(chuàng)的新世界時(shí)都毫無(wú)意識(shí),。想想一個(gè)眾所周知的案例,，就是iPhone的問(wèn)世。iPhone擊敗了Palm Pilot,，基本上消滅了黑莓手機(jī),，搖身變成智能手機(jī)領(lǐng)域的霸主。盡管提出顛覆理論的克萊頓?克里斯坦森錯(cuò)誤地預(yù)計(jì)iPhone將遭遇失敗,，但他后來(lái)辯解說(shuō),，錯(cuò)誤的原因并不是理論存在缺陷，而是他沒(méi)意識(shí)到iPhone顛覆的是筆記本電腦行業(yè),，而非他當(dāng)初認(rèn)為的智能手機(jī)行業(yè),。

實(shí)際情況表明，iPhone并沒(méi)有顛覆筆記本電腦行業(yè),。大多數(shù)人仍然在愉快地同時(shí)使用兩種設(shè)備,。iPhone也沒(méi)有真正顛覆智能手機(jī)行業(yè)。從《道德經(jīng)》的角度來(lái)看,，iPhone最大的意義在于開(kāi)創(chuàng)了一個(gè)全新的世界,，人們都習(xí)慣了身邊要有個(gè)人電腦。實(shí)際上,，當(dāng)初硅谷開(kāi)發(fā)觸屏技術(shù)時(shí),，喬布斯可以選擇走平板電腦路線(xiàn)。畢竟,，配備實(shí)體鍵盤(pán)的筆記本電腦總是有些累贅,，而使用觸屏的平板電腦應(yīng)該能顛覆筆記本電腦行業(yè),。

然而，喬布斯決定把這項(xiàng)新技術(shù)用于手機(jī),。在顛覆理論看來(lái),，這樣做并不明智，原因是大家都已經(jīng)有手機(jī)了,。按照《道德經(jīng)》的觀點(diǎn)，喬布斯創(chuàng)造新世界的方法就是把我們已經(jīng)在用而且隨時(shí)都帶在身邊的日常用品徹底改造,。隨著人們用上這款新手機(jī),，就慢慢開(kāi)始習(xí)慣手上隨時(shí)有個(gè)電腦。這種改變并未顛覆諾基亞或者黑莓,，只是讓那些產(chǎn)品變得很落伍,。在此之后，和iPhone抗衡的不再是Palm Pilot,，而是安卓,，一種同樣適用新世界法則的手機(jī)系統(tǒng)，一個(gè)如今我們覺(jué)得很自然的世界,。

所以,，想創(chuàng)新的人看待世界時(shí)最好還是根據(jù)《道德經(jīng)》而不是《孫子兵法》。如果把人生比作一盤(pán)棋,，踐行《孫子兵法》的人會(huì)竭盡全力取勝,，前提是棋盤(pán)、棋子和對(duì)手都不變,；而《道德經(jīng)》式創(chuàng)新者則清楚地知道,，棋盤(pán)隨時(shí)都可以打翻，所以,，他們會(huì)完全轉(zhuǎn)向另一種游戲,，而且沒(méi)人會(huì)意識(shí)到出現(xiàn)變化。（財(cái)富中文網(wǎng)）

邁克爾?普伊特和克莉絲汀?格羅斯-羅共同撰寫(xiě)了《道路：中國(guó)哲學(xué)能教給我們的幸福生活》（ The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us about the Good Life）一書(shū)（Simon & Schuster出版社,，2016年）

譯者：Charlie

審校：夏林

When disruption became the rallying cry for innovators a decade ago, they seized on ancient work of Chinese philosophy to prove their point. In Sun-Tzu’s Art of War, a new class of business disrupters claimed to have found the original manual.

They were right about ancient Chinese philosophy, but wrong about the manual.

As it turns out, another text from China, the Laozi, actually offers a much more expansive—and revolutionary—vision of innovation. Like the Art of War, the Laozi is a 2000-year-old text full of inscrutable and aphoristic sound bites. It too teaches how the seemingly weaker can defeat the more powerful. But that is where the similarities end.

The Art of War says that victory comes to a general—read, a business leader—who avoids following conventional strategies and instead uses surprising tactics to unsettle a seemingly dominant opponent: David wielding his humble slingshot against a clueless, stodgy Goliath. But it assumes that the disrupter has to take into account things like the actual terrain on which he is fighting and that he must treat his adversary as stable and unchanging.

The Laozi, by contrast, questions the very idea that we should try to come up with innovative strategies within a defined, predictable arena, whether that is the battlefield or dinner table, the boardroom or the steel industry. Instead, the Laozi assumes a world in constant flux and motion.

In most situations, including the most mundane daily interactions, we tend to assume stability. Our pugnacious and abrasive coworker is, by and large, always pugnacious and abrasive. We might change how we approach him at times—trying out a more assertive demeanor to see if that works against him. Or we might try the approach the Art of Waradvocates, and act in a softer way to try to neutralize him.

But the Laozi diverges from both of these approaches completely. It doesn’t focus on the relationship between two potential opponents. It focuses instead on the big picture—on what it would take to change the situation altogether so that the result would be that we wouldn’t have to deal with a pugnacious colleague at all. The key lies in understanding one basic idea: although we tend to think of things as stable because that makes them easier to grasp, every situation that ever arises actually results from interactions between sets of constantly shifting, interweaving worlds.

We mostly react to other people, and they to us: we get dispirited by someone’s unexpected frown or we feel energy from sharing a laugh. We also react to things that we assume are stable—like, say, an airless room with no window. Is it any surprise that we emerge from it feeling cranky, a mood that becomes the undercurrent to a disastrous phone call later that day with an important client?

That’s why innovation in Laozian terms doesn’t come from seeing a given situation—a landscape, a relationship, an industry—as unchanging, and then coming up with a fresh tactic within that stable situation to neutralize an opponent.

Instead, Laozian innovation comes from an awareness that if everything is composed of moving parts, subtle actions allow one to alter or even make the world into something new. And Laozian innovators see this happening so seamlessly that the new order quickly becomes taken for granted.

This kind of innovator acts according to wu-wei, or the principle of non-action: seeming not to act while actually directing everything. These innovators may be active and even overtly powerful. They can even be in positions of considerable power. But what makes them Laozian is that while they look as though they are directing something, it’s not what we think they are directing.

No one today questions the right to news information 24 hours a day. But a few short decades ago this was, of course, unimaginable. Ted Turner changed all that. He didn’t just use developing technologies to challenge the networks and their hold on the news. He changed the world they were operating in, by changing the assumptions behind it. He created a new one that crushed the idea that the news belonged to a few TV channels and a few hours of the day, and thus helped pave the way for the day when everyone can assume news is delivered instantly and around the clock.

Amazon, too, began with a classic disruption move: using new technology (the internet and a website) to disrupt a book industry based upon physical bookstores. But instead of enjoying the profitability that could result from such a classic strategy, Bezos kept moving into industry after industry, often at great and seemingly foolish financial cost.

Though it may have appeared that he was simply disrupting more industries, his real subversive move was to create a new world altogether, where Amazon would simply become the first place anyone would ever go for anything. Bezos did not disrupt the book industry or even several industries. He created a new world where those industries became less relevant because a large amount of shopping would now be done through this one website.

It’s that we don’t realize that we are entering these new worlds created by others that makes them so powerful. Think of one well-known example—the introduction of the iPhone, which brought down the Palm Pilot, practically annihilated the Blackberry, and went on to become the go-to product in the smartphone industry. Even though Clayton Christensen, the creator of disruption theory, incorrectly predicted that the iPhone would be a failure, he argued later that his mistake had not been due to a flaw in the theory itself, but to his having failed to recognize that the iPhone was disrupting the laptop industry, not the smartphone industry as he’d originally assumed.

As it turns out, the iPhone did not disrupt the laptop industry. Most of us happily use both a laptop and an iPhone. It did not really disrupt the smartphone industry either. What it really did, in Laozian terms, was generate an entirely new world, one in which we now take for granted that personal computers should always be by our side. In fact, when touchscreen technologies were being developed in Silicon Valley, Jobs could have gone the tablet route. Indeed, a touchscreen tablet would have disrupted a laptop industry constrained by the burdensome shape required to accommodate a keyboard.

But Jobs decided to use the new technology on a phone, which from the perspective of disruption theory looked unwise, since everyone already owned one. In Laozian terms, Jobs created a new world simply through completely reinventing a daily object we already used and carried around all the time. As we used this “phone,” we slowly began to take it for granted that we would always have a personal computer within our palm at any given moment. This didn’t disrupt Nokia or Blackberry; it simply rendered their products irrelevant. Thereafter, competition with an iPhone wouldn’t come from a Palm Pilot; it would come from an Android, which was operating within this new world; a world we now take as natural.

That’s why those who aspire to innovate are better off seeing the world through a Laozian, not Sunzian, lens. If life is like a game of chess, Sunzians concentrate all their effort towards winning in a situation in which the board, the pieces, and the opponent are immutable. Laozian innovators know the chessboard can be tipped over at any moment. So they shift to another game entirely without anyone even realizing what is being changed.

Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh are the authors of The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us about the Good Life (Simon & Schuster, 2016)