科技创新 硅谷可以向首尔学到什么

Like most young people in the Bay Area, Mike Kim grew up believing that the future of technology was being forged in Silicon Valley. Raised in Piedmont, an affluent suburb of Oakland, Kim was in college during the rise of Facebook, and he watched in amazement as tech start-ups transformed the world around him. After graduating in 2006, he found work in the industry, at Zynga, Monster.com and LinkedIn.麦克·金(Mike Kim)像美国湾区的大多数年轻人一样，自小就坚信硅谷打造出着科技的未来。金在皮德蒙特长大，那是奥克兰的一个富足的郊区。Facebook兴起时，金正在上大学。

他惊讶地看著科技初创公司变革着他周围的世界。2006年毕业后，他在科技行业寻找了工作，先后效力于Zynga、Monster.com和领英(LinkedIn)。

Then, five months ago, he accepted an offer to work for Woowa Brothers, a South Korean company that runs a food-delivery start-up called Baedal Minjok. The job was great — but living in Seoul was nothing less than a revelation.后来，就在五个月前，他拒绝接受了屋瓦兄弟(Woowa Borthers)的工作机会。这是韩国的一家公司，运营着一家食品寄送初创公司，叫作Baedal Minjok。

工作本身十分好，而且在釜山生活的经历让他大开眼界。“When I was in S.F., we called it the mobile capital of the world,” he said. “But I was blown away because Korea is three or four years ahead.” Back home, Kim said, people celebrate when a public park gets Wi-Fi. But in Seoul, even subway straphangers can stream movies on their phones, deep beneath the ground. “When I go back to the U.S., it feels like the Dark Ages,” he said. “It’s just not there yet.”“在旧金山的时候，我们都把旧金山叫作世界手机之都，”他说道。

“但是我显然想不到韩国（比旧金山）先进设备了三、四年。”在美国，金说，公园有了无线网络人们都要额手相庆。但在釜山，即便是乘地铁下班的人都能在手机上播出流媒体电影，哪怕是在地下很深的地方。“我返回美国，就样子返回了中世纪，”他说道。

“我们还没有发展到那种程度。”While Silicon Valley is the largest and most enduring locus of tech innovation, a number of cities around the planet are nipping at its heels: Tel Aviv, Berlin, Bangalore. But Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is in a sense the Valley’s closest rival. American investors are beginning to catch on, and venture capital is starting to flow west, across the Pacific. An early-stage American venture firm called 500 Startups recently spun off a small fund called 500 Kimchi, which focuses exclusively on South Korea. Last fall, Goldman Sachs led a round of investment in Woowa Brothers and its delivery service. In May, Google opened a campus in Seoul, its first in Asia. The office is in the trendy district of Gangnam — yes, that Gangnam — which is already home to a growing cluster of mobile start-ups and a handful of technology incubators to mentor them.尽管硅谷仍是仅次于也是最长久的科技创新中心，不过世界上的不少城市正在急起直追：特拉维夫、柏林、班加罗尔。但在某种程度上，韩国大城釜山是与硅谷最相似的输掉。

美国投资者开始意识到这一点，风险投资也向西流一动，穿过了太平洋。美国一家名为创业500(500 Startups)的早期风投公司最近将一项取名为“泡菜500”(500 Kimchi)的小基金分离出来了出来，专门探讨韩国。去年秋天，高盛集团引导了一轮投资，投向屋瓦兄弟及其寄送服务。五月，谷歌公司在釜山对外开放了一个办公园区。

这是谷歌在亚洲的第一个办公园区。办公地点就坐落于新潮的江南区——到底，就是《江南Style》里的那个江南——这一地区早已挤满了一批手机初创企业，其数量日益增长，那里还有一些科技产卵公司对他们展开指导。Tim Chae, who runs 500 Kimchi, said that American investors have begun to think of Seoul as a sort of crystal ball. In it, they can glimpse a future where the most ambitious dreams of Silicon Valley — a cashless, carless, everything-on-demand society — have already been realized. Nearly all of Seoul’s residents use smartphones, and many of the services just now gaining in popularity in the United States have been commonplace in South Korea for years.泡菜500的经营人蒂姆·蔡(Tim Chae)说道，美国投资者早已开始把釜山当成某种水晶球，通过它可以看见，硅谷最宏伟的梦想——一个无钞、无车、一切应有尽有的社会——早已构建了。完全所有的釜山居民都用智能手机，很多现在才刚在美国流行起来的服务，在韩国早就司空见惯。

Much of this was made possible by two decades of enormous public investment. Seoul is blanketed with free Wi-Fi that offers the world’s fastest Internet speeds — twice as fast as the average American’s. Back in 1995, the government began a 10-year plan to build out the country’s broadband infrastructure and, through a series of public programs, to teach Koreans what they could do with it. South Korea also eased regulations on service providers to ensure that consumers would have a multitude of choices — in marked contrast to America, where a handful of cable and telecommunications monopolies dominate the market. Such healthy competition in Korea keeps the cost of access low.这在相当大程度是由于20年来极大的公共投资。釜山已被免费的无线网络覆盖面积，且网速为世界最慢，为美国平均值网速的两倍。早在1995年，政府就积极开展了一项十年计划来建设国家的宽带基础设施，并且通过一系列公共项目来教韩国人如何用于这些设施。

韩国也限制了对服务供应商的管制，以保证消费者有多种自由选择，这与少数几家有线与电信巨头统治者下的美国构成鲜明对比。在韩国，这种良性竞争使得网络终端成本维持在较低水平。To maintain South Korea’s lead, the country’s Science Ministry recently announced a $1.5 billion initiative to upgrade Korea’s mobile infrastructure. By 2020, the government predicts, it will be 1,000 times faster — so fast you could download a feature-length movie in approximately one second. In the same time frame, the Federal Communications Commission hopes to wire most American homes with broadband Internet with speeds of at least 100 megabits per second, or roughly one-sixtieth of South Korea’s goal.为了维持韩国的领先地位，韩国教育科学技术部(Science Ministry)最近宣告了一项投资15亿美元（约合93亿元人民币）的项目，对韩国的移动基础设施展开升级。

政府预计，到2020年，网速将是现在的1000倍——慢到你可以在约一秒钟的时间里iTunes一部电影长片。在某种程度的时间段里，美国联邦通信委员会(Federal Communications Commission)的期望是给大部分家庭装上速度最少为每秒100MB的宽带网络，这个速度大体是韩国的目标的六十分之一。

South Korea may be futuristic in some regards, but from a design perspective, many of the country’s most popular web services look outmoded, like throwbacks to the ’90s. Most mobile apps and web pages are crammed with chaotic boxes of information, stacked headlines and flashing lines of text.韩国在一些方面有可能十分新潮，但从设计的角度来看，韩国很多最热门的网络服务看上去极为过时，看起来返回了上世纪90年代。大部分移动应用于和网页上塞满了杂乱的信息板、六边形的标题和闪烁着经常出现的一行行文字。

This is certainly true of KakaoTalk, a messaging app that is installed on 93 percent of Korea’s smartphones. KakaoTalk was developed in 2010 by Beom-su Kim, an early web pioneer in Korea who built a popular online gaming portal called Hangame. A failed effort to take Hangame to the United States happened to coincide with the release of the first iPhone. Beom-su Kim bought several and began developing apps for them, a full two years before the device would arrive in South Korea. KakaoTalk was one of his first creations.这一点毫无疑问可以在韩国93%的智能手机都加装了的即时通讯应用于KakaoTalk上看见。KakaoTalk是韩国早期的网络先驱金凡秀(Beom-su Kim)于2010年研发出来的。金凡秀创立了一个用户众多的在线游戏门户Hangame。

他企图将该门户推上美国，不过告终了，当时正逢第一代iPhone问世。金凡秀买了几部iPhone，并开始为它们研发应用于。这比iPhone登岸韩国早于了整整两年。

KakaoTalk就是他的首批作品之一。The app was quickly adopted by Korean users as a free alternative to text messaging. Part of its success is due to the fact that KakaoTalk functions like its own version of the Internet within a smartphone: Users don’t have to close the app, ever, to check the news, talk to friends, order dinner or play games. To an American, the app’s design is insane, like stepping into a demented fun house. Pages are drenched in neon and populated with googly-eyed cartoon animals.这款应用于迅速在韩国用户中获得普及，被当作了短信的免费替代品。

它的顺利部分是因为，KakaoTalk的起到类似于在智能手机内自成一体的互联网：用户任何时候都不必重开这款应用于之后可以查阅新闻、联系朋友、点餐和玩游戏。在美国人显然，它的设计不可理喻，让人实在看起来走出了一座能把人逼疯的游乐宫。

页面通体闪烁着霓虹灯，还有羚羊着眼的卡通动物。By contrast, American mobile design is fetishistically minimalist. Silicon Valley applauds itself for good taste in this regard, but this aesthetic has sprung up partly in response to a deficiency: Americans have learned to strip out bandwidth-guzzling elements because they slow down loading times. Korean designers, lacking such bandwidth restraints, can stuff their apps full of all the information and widgets they like. On-screen real estate isn’t an issue, either, because Koreans prefer massive phones. While the “phablet” — the missing link between a phone and a tablet — is popular as a punch line in the United States, it’s been in high demand in South Korea for years.相比之下，美国的移动应用于设计有一种近于珍崇拜。

硅谷在这方面自居品味卓绝，但这种审美部分一定程度上是某种缺失造成的：美国人早已学会去除应用于中不会消耗大量比特率的设计，因为这些不会减少写入时间。韩国设计师们由于没类似于的宽带容许，可以在应用于中给定购置各种各样的信息和小部件。屏幕空间也不是问题，因为韩国人讨厌大屏手机。介于手机和平板电脑之间的平板手机，在美国经常被当作笑料，在韩国毕竟热卖多年。

This trans-Pacific gap in bandwidth is so pronounced that Korean developers often have to strip down their software if they want to take it stateside. Nicole Kim, chief executive of a file-sharing service called Sunshine, which recently opened an office in San Francisco, said the service had to be adapted to inferior American broadband. “We made Sunshine simpler because the speeds are quite lower than the Korean and Hong Kong networks,” she said. She says her engineers recoded the app to allow for the sharing of smaller items, like design files and business documents. In Asia, people use Sunshine for more bandwidth-intensive files, like music and videos.太平洋两岸宽带速度差距之大，一般来说让韩国软件开发者被迫移除软件的部分功能才能推上美国销售。文件共享服务应用于Sunshine最近刚刚在旧金山开办分部，其继续执行总裁妮可·金(Nicole Kim)说道，公司的服务必需要考虑到美国较低的宽带速度。“我们修改了Sunshine，因为美国的网速比韩国、香港较低了不少，”她说道。

她称之为她的工程师因此要新的写出程序用作共享较小的文件，比如设计文件和商业文件。而在亚洲，人们用Sunshine共享对宽带拒绝较高的文件，比如音乐和视频。Even when Korean firms don’t encounter technological issues, the design gulch can confound their attempts to lure American customers. In 2014, Doyon Kim was tasked with taking Band, a South Korean mobile-messaging app, to Silicon Valley. Band lets friends chat, plan outings, share video files, split bills and even conduct informal polls about where to go to dinner. Doyon Kim says that the sheer number of Band’s functions confused users who were not accustomed to performing all of those tasks within a single app.即使韩国公司不面对技术难题，设计方面的鸿沟也不会为更有美国客户减少艰难。

2014年金东阳(Doyon Kim)负责管理将韩国移动讯息应用于Band打进硅谷。Band反对朋友聊天、计划上下班、共享视频、分摊账单，甚至还可以发动非正式投票辩论用餐地点。金东阳说道，正是Band的多功能性使用户深感疑惑，他们不习惯在一个应用于里处置这么多事务。

“As a newcomer in the United States, products have to have one strong feature to market,” he said. “Band had so many features and functionalities, that when people saw the product, they didn’t really get it.” The app got lost in the mix of services like GroupMe, Venmo, Tilt and Dropbox — well-established stand-alone products that let people perform the individual functions that Band offered. Despite attracting 30 million users in South Korea, in the United States, “It barely made a blip.”“作为刚登岸美国的产品，产品本身在市场上必需有一个注目的卖点，”他说道。“Band有过于多特色功能，人们用它时无法几乎掌控这个产品。”这个应用于水淹在了比如GroupMe、Venmo、Tilt、Dropbox这样较为顺利的产品中，而Band所获取的服务正是这些专心于某一项功能的产品的子集。

Band在韩国更有了3000万用户，但在美国“完全没有多大动静”。Silicon Valley’s single-use obsession found its most absurd expression last summer in the infamous rise of an app called Yo. Yo allows users to send messages saying one thing only — “Yo.” — and thanks to its charming idiocy, it became an overnight sensation. It quickly raised $1.5 million and was valued at as much as 10 times that, despite having, to put it mildly, extremely limited utility. Still, it spawned a series of other hypersimple applications, including “Lo,” which lets you share your location, and “1minLate,” which automatically alerts your friends when you’re running late. The success of Yo revealed a lot about Silicon Valley ideology: For all the changing-the-world talk, novelty frequently outweighs functionality.硅谷对单一功能应用于的执著，最荒谬的相比较是去年夏天风行的应用软件Yo。

这个软件只容许用户放一种信息——“Yo”，这种傻乎乎的甜美，让它一夜间引发极大震撼。虽然它的实用价值，直白地说道，极为受限，但却迅速更有到150万美元投资，身价据估计堪称这个数字的十倍。它也促成了其他一系列超级非常简单的应用于，其中还包括共享用户所在地点的“Lo”和自动通报朋友你不会比誓约时间耽误一点的“1minLate”。Yo的顺利相当大程度上说明了了硅谷的理念：嘴上说道着“转变世界”，但实质上新奇往往比不上简单。

Among the wave of single-use apps is a category that has come to be called “Ubers for X” — firms that, as Uber does with cars, promise the delivery of a service in physical space at the tap of a button. A site called Product Hunt lists dozens of them, and, as a group, they’re enlightening. There’s Shortcut (Uber for haircuts), Minibar (Uber for alcohol), Doughbies On-Demand (Uber for fresh chocolate-chip cookies), JetMe (Uber for private jets), Eaze (Uber for marijuana) and many more. None of these has radically altered the way Americans live, perhaps because the ideal customer of all these services — wealthy, likes snacks, smokes pot — probably already works in Silicon Valley.单一功能应用于浪潮中，还经常出现了“Ubers for X”类应用于，这类应用于和获取汽车服务的Uber一样，用户只需按一下按钮，就能取得它们获取的实地服务。一个名为Product Hunt的网站罗列出有了数十种这类应用服务，总体来看令人耳目一新，其中还包括Shortcut(获取剪发服务的Uber)，Minibar(获取酒水的Uber)，Doughbies On-demand （获取新鲜巧克力打碎饼干的Uber）, JetMe （获取私人飞机的Uber），Eaze（获取大麻的Uber），等等。这些应用于都没彻底改变美国人的生活方式，有可能是因为所有这些服务的理想客户——富裕，讨厌零食和大麻——都早已在硅谷工作了。

In Korea, apps that depend on widespread demand for convenience stand a much better chance. Eric Kim, a founder of Goodwater Capital, a global venture firm that invests heavily in South Korea, said that the country’s high population density and relative homogeneity makes it ideal for testing out new mobile services. There are about 50 million people in South Korea, and one in five of them lives in Seoul. Services that would be logistically difficult to deploy in much of the United States scale easily in the capital.在韩国，为广大用户获取便捷的应用于有更佳的市场机遇。全球风投公司古德沃特资本(Goodwater Capital)在韩国展开了大量投资，其创始人埃里克·金(Eric Kim)回应，韩国人口密度低且比较同质，因此韩国是检验新的移动服务的理想之地。韩国约有5000万人口，其中五分之一居住于在釜山。一些在美国会受限于物流部署艰难的服务，在韩国的大城可以精彩构建规模化。

Eric Kim offered the example of Coupang, a rising e-commerce company that offers same-day delivery, and sometimes same-hour delivery, for things like groceries and diapers. (He is on the company’s board.) It helps that delivery culture is so deeply established in Seoul, where people are accustomed to having couriers meet them at the subway station near their homes to deliver their dry cleaning and, occasionally, their dinner. Meanwhile, most Americans are still adjusting to using Amazon for more than books and gifts.埃里克·金还以Coupang公司为事例，这家刚兴起的电子商务公司获取当日车主服务，有时还获取一小时内车主的服务，车主物品诸如生鲜食品和纸尿片。（埃里克是该公司董事。）韩国的车主文化根深蒂固，这对Coupang十分不利，人们习惯了大约租车员在家附近的地铁站签收他们的乳化剂衣物，有时还有晚餐。

互为较之下，大多数的美国还不适应环境在亚马逊(Amazon)出售图书和礼物以外的东西。South Korea’s biggest start-ups are still dwarfed by the behemoths of California. But the Valley is keen to learn from their businesses, many of which turn healthy profits — something that many celebrated start-ups don’t do.在加利福尼亚的巨头面前，韩国那些仅次于的初创公司仍旧是相形见绌。

但是硅谷热衷自学韩国公司的经营方式，虽然其中的很多经营方式建构了相当可观的利润——许多声名显赫的初创公司尚能做到将近这一点。One thing Silicon Valley hopes to learn is how to get Americans to actually pay for things on their phones. For years now, Koreans have carried out important daily transactions, like paying bills and shopping, on their smartphones. They’re also more inclined to pay for virtual accouterments that liven up digital interactions: for example, virtual stickers that, for $1 to $2 per pack, can be pasted into online and mobile chats. Line and KakaoTalk are among the largest mobile chatting apps in South Korea, with revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and only a portion of their income is derived from advertising. The rest comes from selling those digital stickers, as well as music and games.如何让美国人知道在手机上收费，这是硅谷必须向韩国自学的一件事。

韩国人很多年前就早已开始在手机上展开最重要的日常交易，例如用智能手机缴纳账单和购物。韩国人还讨厌出售虚拟世界商品，这为数码对话加添了生气。比如说，价格在1至2美元的虚拟世界表情包在，可以张贴在网上和移动聊天室。

连我(Line)和Kakao Talk位列韩国仅次于的移动聊天应用于之佩，收益在数亿美元的级别，其中只有一部分来自于广告。其余的来自数字贴以及音乐和游戏的销售。

Silicon Valley might also learn how to cater to more customers in more countries around the world. Most Korean companies have been internationally minded since their inception, aware of their own limitations: South Korea is such a small market that entrepreneurs are forced to consider how they might adapt to business abroad.硅谷有可能还要学会如何顺应更加多国家的顾客市场需求。大部分的韩国公司在创办之初之后不具备了国际头脑，很确切自己不存在的局限性：韩国的市场十分的小，因此创业者们被迫考虑到如何适应环境海外的商业环境。But without a more affordable, better mobile web, even the best new offerings from American entrepreneurs will be stuck in the past. Perhaps one of the biggest lessons Silicon Valley’s innovators should learn from South Korea is that to radically change how everyday people live their lives, they’ll need to convince their nation to invest in infrastructure, so that we can actually use the services they want to sell us.然而，如果没一个更加廉价、更加优质的移动网络，即便是美国创业者发售的最佳产品也不会跟上时代。也许硅谷的创意人士应当向韩国自学的最重要的经验之一乃是，如何给人们的日常生活带上去轻微的变化，他们必须劝说自己的国家展开基础设施投资，只有这样我们才需要确实用于到他们想卖给我们的服务。

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