文/mr.6
今早受訪忙碌，因此拿出之前曾想寫的主題，當時看到《紐約時報》有一篇報導極有趣（另一篇見此），它說，近二十年來，全世界的大學的畢業典禮都流行一句「口號」，這句口號跟著所有年輕人進入職場，並跟著在職場陪伴這些年輕人經歷高潮與低潮，每當遇到工作上的挫折，或是面試沒過、老闆罵人，就會有如一條雄壯威武的軍歌，搥打著這些年輕人的心肝，讓他們充滿希望……。
這個神奇的一句話，就是──
「跟著你的熱情走！」(Follow your passion)!
「不管一切，只做自己！」
這位作者說，這種「做自己」、「熱情自選」的一句話，遲早會害了年輕人！
節錄自 遠見雜誌，2010年7月出刊，No.289
本期《遠見》主要訪問MIT各領域大師，再橫跨到台灣大陸等地知名專家，一同帶讀者進入未來十年的20個大未來。
大未來1：未來不會再發生經濟蕭條，只會有循環式的經濟衰退。在這次受訪的MIT大師中，史隆管理學院前院長、知名經濟學家梭羅（Lester Thurow）提出他對未來十年全球經濟的看法：「未來肯定會再發生全球經濟衰退，這是資本主義加上全球化的關係。」
英國小說家瑪麗．韋布（Mary Webb）曾說：「在騎上夢想之前請先擺上馬鞍。」策略的重要性不下於夢想本身，可是人們還是疏於規劃，忙著仰望天空，忽略腳踏實地。
以下是筆者對於實踐夢想所採行的策略原則，希望讀者覺得很有用，值得記起來：
● 標明個人所有定位
作者: 鄒景平/資訊科技專欄作者
四十年以前，大學畢業生最大的希冀，就是申請到美國大學的獎學金，出國留學，那時很多人拿到的是助教獎學金，一邊在研究所唸書，一邊幫大學部的課程擔任助教，然而現在的美國大學，對於助教的工作，有了新的思維。他們改變僱用學生來擔任的模式，而嘗試把助教的工作外包給專業的公司來執行。
原因跟美國大學的教學環境有關，由於老師有限，所以大學部的主要課程，都採取大班方式進行，例如計算機概論、統計學、經濟學、物理、化學等課程，一間教室有數百位學生，學生跟老師間難以互動，雖然有助教，但卻學校不容易掌控助教服務的速度和品質，更難以達成個人化的教學。
如今，休士頓大學(Univ. of Houston)、西山線上學院(west hills college online)、U21global(美國線上企管研究院)等校，已經開始把批改學生作業的工作，外包給一家叫做「Virtual-TA」的公司來執行，這家公司翻成中文就是「虛擬助教」，他們在網站(：http://www.virtual-ta.com)上，不但舉出服務成功的案例，還條列了使用他們服務的效益。
作者: ：【嘉豐資本】投資合夥人黃紹麟
◎傳統出版社的三大功能
賣書的生意還能做多久？會提出這個疑問並不代表著認為（紙本的）書籍會消失，而是認為「出版」這個產業的樣貌會被大大的改變。數位音樂跟隨網際網路發展到現在已經十多年，而音樂CD照樣有人買。因此這並不是誰取代誰的問題，而是誰成為主流的問題。
內容產業重組，無非是「舊中間人被邊緣化，新中間人變成主流」。報社是讀者通向新聞的中間人，現在變成入口網站。唱片公司是樂迷通向音樂的中間人，目前還沒有人能取代他的地位，但音樂的流通管道變成了網際網路（免費）及蘋果iTunes之類的音樂商城（付費）。
以往的出版產業大約可以概分為四種角色：作者，出版社，書店，消費者。其中，出版社擔任的工作是最為關鍵的，沒有出版社在其中謀劃一切，出版這件事情就不會是現在的樣貌。而出版社最重要的功能有三，第一是企劃管理，包含尋找作者與主題，出版前後推廣行銷等。
第二是資金管理，一般人沒錢出書，印刷推廣都要錢，而這個錢是出版社先墊付了。資金管理的功能尤為重要，因為出版社分攤了書籍作者將創作進行商品化的風險，從而使得一般人出書的意願提高而門檻變低，成就了我們今天有這麼多書可看的百家爭鳴時代。
Google Inc. plans to begin selling digital books in late June or July, a company official said Tuesday, throwing the search giant into a battle that already involves Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc.
Google has been discussing its vision for distributing books online for several years and for months has been evangelizing about its new service, called Google Editions. The company is hoping to distinguish Google Editions in the marketplace by allowing users to access books from a broad range of websites using an array of devices, unlike rivals that are focused on proprietary devices and software.
Chris Palma, Google's manager for strategic-partner development, announced the timetable for Google's plans on Tuesday at a publishing- industry panel in New York.
Jeff Trachtenberg discusses Google plan to start selling digital books this summer, setting the stage for a battle of the online behemoth booksellers. Plus, Apple attracts antitrust scrutiny from regulators and Congress drafts a web-ad privacy bill.
目前在美國的高等教用書與在職用書市售額僅佔整體教科書產業的 0.5%，但最近根據美國 MBS Textbook Exchange 二手書批發商旗下服務的 Xplana 教育機構所公佈的一項研究報告顯示，預估到 2014 年，教用書籍數位版本的銷售額將會攀升至將近 20%，這個數據將為數位化教科書產業帶來估計 10 億美元的市場商機。
根據《紐約時報》轉載該 Xplana 研究報告主持人 Rob Reynolds 的說法，他認為數位版本教用書的銷量在接下來五年間會逐漸攀升，主要原因來自於市面上平板電腦或數位閱讀器如：蘋果 iPad 和亞馬遜 Kindle 的產量逐漸擴大，而閱讀器的價錢以及數位內容的取得也越來越變便利，再加上一般讀者對線上閱讀的興趣逐漸增加，在在提升了電子書時代的來臨。
基於這項報告，目前預估 2010 年在美國的數位教用書銷售額會以 100% 的正成長率逐年攀升，推估到 2014 年，每五本教用書中就有一本是數位版本。
數位教用書之所以能在產業中出頭，主要是以價錢取勝。「物美價廉」的數位閱讀經驗才能吸引學生們更大的興趣。美國大學生每學期花費在教用書上的金額所費不貲，如有出版商能提供學生免費線上閱讀，只需在下載列印時收費，那必定更加吸引學生加入數位閱讀的行列。
Building a great business and operating it well no longer guarantees you'll be around in 100 years, or even 20. In 1958, the average length of time a company remained on the S&P 500 was 57 years; by 1983, it had dropped to 30 years; in 2008, it was just 18.
Shorter business life cycles require a new sort of management discipline capable of leading an organization through an ongoing process of transformation and renewal. To thrive in today's marketplace, to be built to last, every business now must be built to transform.
Consider Amazon (AMZN), which emerged from the dot-com bubble one of the few winners and continued to blaze a trail of impressive growth (from about $4 billion in 2002 to nearly $20 billion in 2008). One of the most unexamine facets of Amazon's high-profile success is its unabashed embrace of transformational growth in its white space. Amazon survived the dot-com bust because it had a viable and innovative business model built around a market-changing customer value proposition and a radical profit formula, which upended the staid book industry. Then it quickly expanded beyond books to include all sorts of easily shippable consumer goods, growing from its core into near adjacencies. But Amazon didn't stop there.
A few years later, the company seized its white space when it devised a new value proposition, offering a commission-based brokerage service to buyers and sellers of used books. Then it moved into its white space again by developing a model to serve an entirely different customer: third-party sellers. By opening up its storefront to other retailers that were essentially competitors, Amazon transformed its business from direct sales to a sales-and-service model, aggregating many sellers under one virtual roof and receiving commissions from the other companies' sales.
Then Amazon did it yet again, identifying a new area of potential growth by finding another new customer—the IT community. Serving this new customer's needs required different processes, different resources, and a different profit formula—in short, another new business model. In 2002 Amazon launched a web services platform. Perhaps it was risky for a young company that had only reached profitability in that same year to invest its innovation resources in new business models rather than stick to its core, but within five years the site used by Amazon's web-services platform had grown into the seventh-largest in the world. And Amazon kept going. In late 2007, it set up Lab126, whose first product, the Kindle e-book reader, came to market wrapped in a business model not only foreign to Amazon's DNA but also potentially disruptive to the entire publishing industry.
To launch this high-margin, product-based offering, Amazon had to become an original equipment manufacturer (OEM). It wrapped this technology in a seamlessly integrated iTunes-type digital media platform that combined both transaction- and subscription-based content delivery. It partnered with content producers in innovative ways and created an open back-end that allowed independent publishers to generate new content for the Kindle. In its first year, Amazon sold an estimated 500,000 Kindles. Amazon has greatly expanded the market for e-books and positioned itself for success not only in this market but in newspaper and periodical distribution as well.
Internet retailer Amazon.com (AMZN) may need to write a new chapter for the Kindle in the face of fierce competition from Apple's iPad.
Since Apple (AAPL) announced on Jan. 27 that it would sell a versatile tablet computer that lets users read electronic books and perform a range of other computing tasks, analysts have said the iPad would likely take a bite out of sales of dedicated e-book readers such as Amazon's popular Kindle. In light of Apple's Apr. 8 announcement that it sold 450,000 iPads in less than a week, Wall Street analysts are already slicing their forecasts for Kindle sales.
Charlie Wolf, a senior analyst at Needham & Co. who has a "buy" rating on Apple shares, on Apr. 9 cut his forecast for Kindle sales this year, settling on a range from 2.5 million to 3 million units, in place of a previous forecast of 3.6 million units. Wolf estimates that Amazon sold 2.2 million Kindles in 2009. "It's not a compelling product," he says of the Kindle, because Apple's iPad offers more features, such as the ability to play video, plus a more compelling design.
Piper Jaffray (PJC) analyst Gene Munster, who has an "overweight" rating on Amazon shares, cut his 2010 forecast for Kindle sales by 400,000 units, to 3.45 million. Amazon's top-of-the-line Kindle DX, which is designed to let users read e-books on a black-and-white screen, is selling for $489, just $10 less than Apple's least-expensive iPad.
The iPad starts at $499 for a model with 16 gigabytes of storage, a color touchscreen, and a library of 60,000 e-books. It also affords users the ability to watch videos, listen to music, and run a wide variety of applications. "No one in their right mind is going to buy a Kindle DX," says Munster.
To keep pace with consumers' heightened expectations about what a tablet-style computer should do, Amazon may need to lower the Kindle's price or introduce such new features as a color screen to make the device more compelling, analysts say.
Two days ago, the first buyers of Apple's iPad began putting it through its paces, playing games, navigating the Internet, and downloading electronic books.
That groan you heard was from dozens of book publishers across the United States, reeling from yet another onslaught against their bread and butter: the paper book. First it was Books on Tape, followed by books on phones, and then the king of business model killers, Amazon.com's Kindle.
"Traditional trade book publishers are scared."
Now the iPad, with its magnificent color display, glitzy "bookshelves," and easy-to-use interface, is poised to take another bite out of the hearts (and profits) of companies from Doubleday to Putnam.
"Traditional trade book publishers are scared," says Harvard Business School professor Peter Olson. "The world that they have known, of print books and brick-and-mortar bookstores—the whole fiscal distribution system—is on the cusp of changing fundamentally."
Olson has a particularly informed view of the issue. Before arriving at HBS in 2008, he was CEO of Random House. In a recent unpublished case study, "The Random House Response to the Kindle," Olson and professor Bharat Anand give students an introduction to the book publishing business and the emerging landscape of e-readers before presenting them with the conundrums that face Random House CEO Markus Dohle (Dohle succeeded Olson in 2008):
