WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, one every year or two. And sometimes there’ll be a bunch of them, like in 1973 and -4. But the problem is, for us is that big, now, really means big. I mean, it has to be billions of dollars to move the needle very much at Berkshire.

沃伦·巴菲特： 是的，大概每一到两年一个。有时会有一系列的大想法，比如在 1973 和 1974 年。但对我们来说，问题是现在“大”真的意味着非常大。我的意思是，它必须达到数十亿美元才能显著影响伯克希尔的表现。

But I would say that when I would turn those pages, 50 years ago in the Moody’s Manuals, I would know when I hit a big idea. I’ve got half a dozen of them that I keep the Xeroxes from those reports around from 50 years ago just because it was so obvious that they just — they were incredible. And that happens every now and then.

但我想说的是，50 年前，当我翻阅《穆迪手册》的页面时，我知道自己遇到了一个“大想法”。有六七个这样的想法，我还保留着那些报告的复印件，就因为它们当时显而易见——它们太了不起了。而这种情况偶尔会发生。

When I met Lorimer Davidson, you know, in end of January, 1951, and he spent four hours or five hours with me explaining GEICO, I knew it was a big idea.

Eight months later, no, probably 10 months later, I wrote an article for The Commercial and Financial Chronicle on “The Security I Like Best.” It was a big idea.

八个月后，不，可能是十个月后，我为《商业与金融年鉴》写了一篇题为《我最喜欢的证券》的文章。那是一个“大想法”。

When I found Western Insurance Securities, I knew it was a big idea.

当我发现 Western Insurance Securities 时，我知道那是一个“大想法”。

I couldn’t put billion — millions — of dollars into it, but I didn’t have millions so it didn’t make any difference.

我当时无法投入数百万或数十亿美元，但因为我也没有这么多钱，所以这并不重要。

And I — we’ve seen things subsequently. And we’ll see, you know. If we have a normal lifespan, we’ll see a few more before we get done, but I can’t tell you that —exactly how —

而且我们后来还看到了一些事情。我们会继续看到，如果我们有正常的寿命，在结束之前我们可能还会看到几个，但我无法确切告诉你——具体如何——

I can’t tell you exactly what transpires in my mind that says, you know, flashes a neon sign up that says, “This is a big idea.”

我无法确切告诉你，在我的脑海里发生了什么，会让我看到“这是一个大想法”的霓虹灯在闪烁。

What happens with you, Charlie?

查理，你会怎么判断？

(Laughter)

（笑声）

Actually, one of my — I’ve have a real system. (Laughter)

事实上，我有一个真正的系统。（笑声）

My idea of a truly big idea is, one I get it and I call Charlie and he only says no, rather than, “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard of.” But if he just says no, it’s a hell of an idea.

我对“大想法”的定义是，当我想到一个想法并打电话给查理时，他只说“不”，而不是说“这是我听过最糟糕的主意”。但如果他只是说“不”，那就说明这是一个了不起的想法。

I remember when I was in my early twenties, I read a book by Tom Peters. He was a big management guru in the eighties. In that book, he was giving the example of two gas stations in California that were diagonal on a busy intersection from each other. Both the gas stations were self-service stations. You come in, you pump your gas, and you leave. The owner would come out maybe once an hour, pick a random car, wash the windshield, or check the oil; just some extra service at no charge. The guy who was diagonal across the street was seeing this take place. He said to himself, "Well, that is kind of stupid. You cannot do it for everyone. If you did it for everyone, you would lose your shirt because you are not charging for it. He never copied or cloned that.

我记得在我二十出头的时候，我读过汤姆-彼得斯（Tom Peters）写的一本书。他是八十年代的管理大师。在那本书里，他举了一个例子：加利福尼亚州有两个加油站，分别位于一个繁忙十字路口的对角线上。这两个加油站都是自助加油站。你进来，加油，然后离开。店主可能一小时出来一次，随便挑一辆车，洗一下挡风玻璃，或者检查一下机油；只是一些额外的服务，不收取任何费用。斜对面的那个人看到了这一幕。他对自己说："嗯，这有点愚蠢。你不能为每个人都这样做。如果你为每个人都这样做，否则你会赔得血本无归，因为你没有收费。他从来没有复制或克隆过。

Over time, what happened is that the gas station that was providing this random extra service saw an increase in business, and the one diagonal from him saw a decrease. Even after seeing the decrease, the guy across the street did not change his behavior. Tom Peter said, and this is what I found very unbelievable, that you can go to your most direct competitors and you can sit down with them, and you can give them all your trade scenes, everything that you learned that has given you an advantage, and they will listen to you, but there will be no behavior change. When I read that, I said, "This is ridiculous. This cannot be the way the world works." I am in my early twenties, I haven't kind of experienced life, and I don't know kind of how things work, but I made a promise to myself that I was going to prove Tom Peters wrong, and I was going to prove him wrong two ways. One, I was going to look for instances where humans see something smart happening and copy or clone it, because that would prove him wrong, and the second is, whenever I see someone doing something smart, I am going to copy it because that also proves him wrong. From my early twenties till now, this year, I am going to be 60, what I found, because I became a student of this, is that Tom Peters was mostly right. I still do not know why this is the case, but humans have an aversion to cloning. They somehow consider it beneath themselves that they did not come up with the idea. What I also found is that when I forced myself to copy things that I found to be smart, it gave me a big edge. This was an example of a simple idea. What I found is that there was a very small sliver of humans who were master cloners, and these humans owned the world. They did very well.

随着时间的推移，提供这种随机额外服务的加油站的生意越来越好，而他斜对面的加油站的生意却越来越差。即使看到生意减少，街对面的那个人也没有改变他的行为。汤姆-彼得说，这是我觉得非常不可思议的地方，你可以去找你最直接的竞争对手，你可以和他们坐下来，把你所有的商业秘密说给他们，你所学到的一切能给你带来优势的东西，他们会听你的，但行为不会改变。当我读到这句话时，我说："这太荒谬了。世界不可能是这样运转的"。我才二十出头，还没有经历过生活，也不知道事情是怎么运作的，但我向自己承诺，我要证明汤姆-彼得斯是错的，我要从两个方面证明他是错的。第一，我要寻找人类看到聪明的事情发生的实例，并复制或克隆它，因为这将证明他是错的；第二，每当我看到有人做聪明的事情时，我就要复制它，因为这也证明他是错的。从我二十出头到现在，今年我就要六十岁了，我发现，因为我成为了这方面的学生，汤姆-彼得斯大部分时候都是对的。我仍然不知道为什么会这样，但人类对克隆有一种反感。他们莫名其妙地认为，不是自己想出了这个主意，就有失身份。我还发现，当我强迫自己复制那些我认为聪明的东西时，会给我带来很大的优势。这是一个简单想法的例子。我发现，有极少数人类是克隆高手，这些人类拥有整个世界。他们做得非常好。

For example, almost everything at Microsoft is cloned. Microsoft spends billions of dollars on its research labs. Nothing has ever come out of that. What has worked for them is looking at Lotus and creating Excel, looking at WordPerfect and creating Word, looking at the Mac and creating Windows, and so on. Even now, OpenAl is a partnership with AI. Google did the work. Microsoft did none of the work, and they are ahead. Sam Walton was another great cloner. In fact, James Sinegal, former CEO of Costco, had cloned the entire model from Sol Price, who he used to work for. Someone asked him, "What did you learn from Sol Price?" His response was, "It is the wrong question. Everything I know is from Sol Price. There is nothing I know that did not come from Sol Price." These were people who took a simple idea very, very seriously. It is not just enough to read about some idea and be impressed with it. When you see that something grabs you, you have to go all in and you have to fight the normal tendency of the status quo.

例如，微软几乎所有的东西都是克隆的，微软在研究实验室上花费了数十亿美元，但却没有任何成果。他们的成功经验是：研究 Lotus 并创造出 Excel，研究 WordPerfect 并创造出 Word，研究 Mac 并创造出 Windows，等等，即使是现在，OpenAl 也是与AI合作。谷歌（在AI方面）做了大量工作，微软没做什么工作，但他们却领先了。山姆-沃尔顿是另一位伟大的克隆者。事实上，好市多的前首席执行官詹姆斯-西内格尔（James Sinegal）就是从他曾经的同事索-普莱斯（Sol Price）那里克隆了整个模式。有人问他："你从索尔-普赖斯那里学到了什么？"他的回答是："这是问错了。我所知道的一切都是从 Sol Price 那里学来的。我所知道的一切都来自于Sol Price"。这些人非常、非常认真地对待一个简单的想法。仅仅读到一些想法并对其印象深刻是不够的。当你看到某个东西抓住了你的心，你就必须全力以赴，你必须与想要维持现状的倾向做斗争。

Warning

巴菲特的评价更加简练：“First come the innovators, then come the imitators, then come the idiots.”，只会模仿的也是白痴。

Both Charlie and Warren, their success has come from the dogged pursuit of a few very simple ideas. For example, when they bought See's Candies in the 70s in California, it was a huge jump for them. They paid three times the book value for the company. They thought they were paying too much, and they didn't understand how good a business it was. The only thing Warren did every year was he left the management alone to run the business. However, on January 1st of each year, he changed all the prices significantly above the rate of inflation. For instance, if inflation was  , he would raise the price  , and the next year it was 3 or  , he would raise another  . What surprised him was he kept pounding in these very heavy price increases and unit volumes kept going up. It stunned him that you could have a business with this much pricing power. Both Warren and Charlie did not understand brands and did not understand the power of brands, but they became very ardent students of "What was this phenomenon? What did this mean? How can we apply this in other businesses?" Today, we see that it was fundamental to Berkshire, because it was, again, looking at a relatively simple idea, but trying to get your arms around it. Many of us start businesses because we see an offering gap. We see some product or service that should exist in the world but doesn't, or maybe there is not enough of it, so we go into it. Once we take that plunge, having this notion of the dogged pursuit of simple ideas will lead to a lot of good things.

无论是查理还是沃伦，他们的成功都源于对一些简单想法的执着追求。例如，70 年代他们在加利福尼亚收购 See's 糖果公司时，对他们来说是一次巨大的跳跃。他们为这家公司支付了三倍于账面价值的价格。他们认为自己花的钱太多了，而且他们并不了解这家公司的业务有多好。沃伦每年做的唯一一件事，就是让管理层独自经营公司。不过，在每年1月1日，他会上调所有价格，提价幅度远高于通胀增速。例如，如果通货膨胀率是3%，他就会把价格提高10%，第二年是3%或4% ，他就会再提高10%。让他惊讶的是，他不断地大幅提价，单位销量却不断上升。这让他惊呆了，原来企业可以有这么大的定价权。沃伦和查理都不了解品牌，也不了解品牌的力量，但他们都非常热衷于研究 "这是什么现象？这意味着什么？我们如何将其应用到其他业务中？今天，我们看到，这对伯克希尔公司来说是至关重要的，因为这同样是在研究一个相对简单的想法，但却要努力去掌握它。我们中的许多人创办企业，是因为看到了市场空白。我们看到一些产品或服务应该存在于这个世界上，但却没有，或者可能还不够多，于是我们就投入其中。一旦我们下定决心，坚持不懈地追求简单的想法，就会有很多好的结果。