偶像化：動詞，指對某人或某物像神一樣崇拜，或過于愛慕。

人們總是傾向于把英雄人物偶像化，這一現象并不新鮮。不管是對政客、商人、運動員還是對娛樂界名人，我們總會把那些我們喜歡的人上升到天神一般的高度。而如果他們沒能滿足我們不切實際的預期時，我們又會毫不猶豫地把他們掀下神壇。這之間的差距何止以千里計。

在明星還是稀罕物的年代，這也不算是個問題。但是在社交媒體每周7天、全天24小時狂轟濫炸的當下，我們對于偶像——特別是企業家偶像的崇拜——幾乎已經到了瘋狂的地步。我甚至不敢肯定人們是否分辨得出哪些是真正的企業家，哪些是冒牌貨。然而對此，有些人甚至根本不在乎。

在我們的推波助瀾下，這邊一波造神運動方興未艾，那邊一波偶像已被打回原型。偶像們的起起落落只是造福了媒體，對我們普通百姓沒有半分好處。恰恰相反，這種造神文化只是教給后來的一代人：辦企業的獎賞只是曇花一現的盛名，而不是長期的成功。

以Theranos公司的CEO伊莉莎白?霍爾姆斯為例。這家硅谷創業公司十年默默無人聞，一朝成名天下知——憑借的一是高達90億美元的天價估值；二是與連鎖藥店巨頭沃爾格林（Walgreens）的全面合作；三是其僅憑幾滴血液幾乎就能立時檢查出多種疾病的豪言。

然而實際上，狂甩7.5億美元的投資者們從來沒有檢驗過Theranos的技術，該技術也從未登上過生物醫藥學的期刊以接受同行的評審。不過霍爾默斯還是有自己的辦法的，她那套“現實扭曲力場”的功夫絲毫不輸蘋果公司的某位聯合創始人，使審查變成了一件沒必要的事。在媒體的熱炒下，她一夜之間成了一名炙手可熱的創業偶像。

霍爾默斯的逆天顏值也登上了《福布斯》（Forbes）的封面。《財富》（Fortune）干脆稱她為“下一個喬布斯”。一個19歲少女從斯坦福退學創業、熱情致力于改變世界的故事，也在《紐約客》（New Yorker）和《紐約時報》（New York Times）等各大媒體上廣為傳播。她還受到了知名主持人查理?羅斯的專訪，獲得了佩珀代因大學（Pepperdine）的名譽博士學位，并且被提名為哈佛醫學院（Harvard Medical School）研究員理事會成員。

當然，想必你并非生活在一個沒有Wi-Fi的環境，所以接下來的故事你一定已經聽說了：曾兩次獲得普利策獎的《華爾街日報》（Wall Street Journal）調查記者約翰?凱瑞伊歐先是拋出了一篇極有份量的頭版文章，隨后又憑借一系列后續報道戳破了霍爾姆斯吹出的大泡泡，撕碎了Theranos的神秘面紗。

聯邦監管機構突擊檢查了該公司的實驗室，發現該公司的技術方法、人員和測試結果的準確性都存在嚴重問題。Theranos隨后宣布其專利產品“愛迪生”驗血機近兩年測試的數萬份血樣報告全部作廢。該公司的加州實驗室有可能被吊銷聯邦執照，而霍爾姆斯本人可能將面臨為期兩年的行業禁令。

當然，兩年前瘋狂吹捧霍爾姆斯和她的“獨角獸”公司的那一干媒體們，現在完全轉變了態度。其中有一篇文章尤其吸引了我的注意。

本周一，《華盛頓郵報》（the Washington Post ）發表了一篇題為《Theranos在責任方面給硅谷上了沉重的一課》的文章。文中，耶魯大學（Yale）教授杰佛里?索南菲爾德和斯坦福大學（Stanford）研究員維維克?瓦德哈認為，Theranos公司及其董事會以及霍爾姆斯本人，乃至整個硅谷，在企業治理方面的長期缺位，是導致這場悲劇的一個重要原因。

“硅谷經常以為自己可以按照有別于美國企業界的另一套規則生存……的確，我們需要允許企業家承擔一些風險、打破一些規則，使他們發揮自己的‘魔力’。但這些規則絕不能是道德規則。道德底線一貫是清楚的，對于Theranos也是一樣，不能有任何妥協。”

這兩位知名學者就將來如何避免此類事件重演給出了建議：“要積極地去質疑那些被過度炒作的創業者。比如眾所周知，Theranos的CEO經常利用媒體為其背書，通過自夸的宣傳資料謀求知名度，或是以所謂‘攪局者’的身份參與TED演講，出現在歡呼盲從的觀眾面前。”

然而，在Theranos的丑聞爆出之前，在滿天飛舞的各類馬屁文章中，還曾經有過這樣一篇文章，名為《伊莉莎白?霍爾姆斯：硅谷最新的一個現象級人物》，該文載于2014年的《圣荷西信使報》（San Jose Mercury News ），文章里寫了這樣一段話：

“斯坦福大學及杜克大學教授兼研究員、企業家精神講師維維克?瓦德哈認為：‘她可能就是硅谷等待已久的女版馬克?扎克伯格。她從年輕時就開始創業，克服各種困難，打造了一種優秀的技術，從而造福全世界。’”

是的，文中的這位瓦德哈，正是《華盛頓郵報》那篇批判文章的作者瓦德哈。我們總是喜歡在人家得勢時大肆吹捧，在人家失勢時站在道德高地上怒吼猛批，有些人更是順風倒的墻頭草，正說反說都有理。怎一個虛偽了得！

我的觀點是：企業家拿出金錢和身家來創業，是值得大力表揚的，但是將企業家偶像化的做法——哪怕是真正的偶像企業家——也是十分愚蠢的。因為他們每個人的特點是無法被簡單模仿的。如果你想成就偉大的事業，首先必須做真實的自己，開創一條自己的路。真正的企業家只領導，不跟隨。

這個世界不需要更多的“他們”，而是需要更多的“你”。 （財富中文網）

譯者：樸成奎

IDOLIZE verb : to worship as a god; to love or admire to excess

We have a tendency to idolize our heroes. That’s nothing new. Whether it’s in politics, business, sports or entertainment, we hoist those we admire up on impossibly high pedestals, and when they fail to meet our lofty expectations, we don’t hesitate to knock them right off. It’s a long way down.

This wasn’t a problem back in the days when stars were few and far between, but in the modern era of an insatiable 24/7 social media circus, we’re obsessing over icons – entrepreneurial ones, in particular – at a frantic rate. And I’m not at all sure we can tell the genuine ones from the fake ones – or that we even care anymore.

While the fanatical zeal with which we build up and knock down the objects of our adulation may be a boon for the media, it doesn’t benefit the rest of us one bit. Rather, this idol-worshipping culture is teaching a generation of up-and-comers that the prize of business is fleeting fame, not long-term success.

Take Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes. The Silicon Valley startup emerged from a decade in stealth mode with a whopping $9 billion valuation, a monster deal with pharmacy giant Walgreens, and bold claims of a breakthrough that could deliver close to real-time diagnostics from a few drops of blood.

Never mind that Theranos’ technology had never been vetted by the investors who ponied up $750 million or published in peer-reviewed biomedical journals. Holmes had a way about her, a reality distortion field not unlike that of a certain Apple co-founder, which made scrutiny seem superfluous. And she was hailed as an instant entrepreneurial icon by a gushing media.

Holmes’ stunning visage appeared on the cover of Forbes and Fortune. Inc. flat out called her “The next Steve Jobs.” The seductive story of a 19-year-old Stanford dropout with the vision and passion to change the world appeared everywhere from the New Yorker to the New York Times. She was interviewed by Charlie Rose, awarded an honorary doctorate from Pepperdine and named to the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows.

Of course, you’d have to be living under a rock with no Wi-Fi to have missed what happened next. John Carreyrou, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter from the Wall Street Journal burst Holmes’ pristine bubble with a front page expose and a series of damning reports that shredded Theranos’ veil of secrecy.

Federal regulators descended on the company’s labs and found serious issues with its methods, its personnel and the accuracy of its test results. Theranos has since voided two-years and tens of thousands of blood tests taken from its proprietary Edison tester. Its California lab may lose its federal license and Holmes faces a potential two-year ban from the industry.

Of course, the same publications that fawned all over Holmes and her marvelous unicorn two years ago have taken a decidedly different position now. One in particular caught my attention.

On Monday, the Washington Post ran an op-ed called “Theranos teaches Silicon Valley a hard lesson about accountability” in which Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Stanford fellow Vivek Wadha skewer Theranos, Holmes, the company’s board and Silicon Valley for chronic lapses in corporate governance:

‘Silicon Valley often thinks that it can live by a different set of rules than corporate America … Yes, we need to allow entrepreneurs to take risks and break some rules so that they can do their magic. But these rules cannot be ethical ones. The lines on ethics are usually clear as they were with Theranos and there can be no compromise.’

These noble academics then sought to impart a lesson in how to avoid this sort of thing in the future. “Question the over-hyped founders,” they write. “Theranos’s CEO notoriously chased testimonial media appearances self-aggrandizing promotional materials and strutted before cheering and unquestioning audiences of wannabe disrupters at TED-talks.”

But here’s the thing. Before all this nasty stuff came out about Theranos, among the myriad of fluff pieces from back in 2014 was a San Jose Mercury News article called “Meet Elizabeth Holmes, Silicon Valley’s latest phenom,” which included the following:

‘She may be the female Mark Zuckerberg that Silicon Valley has been waiting for,’ said Vivek Wadhwa, a professor and researcher at Stanford and Duke and a lecturer on entrepreneurship. ‘She started when she was young, defied the odds and built a great technology, and is doing good for the world.’

Yes, that is the same Vivek Wadhwa who coauthored the Washington Post piece. Not only do we aggrandize entrepreneurs who simply look and act the part and claim moral outrage when they fail to deliver the goods, some of us even have the stones to have it both ways. Hypocrisy at its best.

The point is this. Entrepreneurs deserve tons of credit for putting their bucks and their butts on the line, but idolizing them – even the real ones – is foolish. You can’t copy and paste what makes them unique. It simply doesn’t work that way. If you want to do great work, you have to be your own genuine self and create your own path. Real entrepreneurs don’t follow. They lead.

The world doesn’t need more of them. The world needs more of you.