????幾十年以來，微軟（Microsoft）的共同創始人保羅?艾倫都保持著低調，或者說起碼是在他140億美元的身家允許的程度內保持著低調。有時人們偶爾會發現他駕著價值1.62億美元的私人游艇出海，他還是布拉特?皮特和安吉麗娜?朱莉的好友，而且有時他也會去觀看西雅圖海鷹隊和波特蘭開拓者隊的比賽——當然，這兩只球隊都是他的產業。不過總的來說，艾倫還是一向避免成為鎂光燈下的焦點。

????現在情況變了。現在艾倫的名字到處都是。《名利場》（Vanity Fair）雜志節選了書中的一段精彩文字，內容是關于比爾?蓋茨和微軟現任首席執行官史蒂夫?鮑爾默是如何圖謀稀釋他在微軟的股權的。他還上了CBS電視臺的《60分鐘》訪談節目，上周末甚至還在紐約市的92nd Street Y文化中心露了面。這些都是為了自己的新書《謀士》（Idea Man）作宣傳。本書全面講述了他與比爾?蓋茨的恩怨情仇。故事從他十幾歲的時候開始，一直講述到現在。當年他總是和蓋茨一起擺弄學校里的電傳式ASR-33計算機終端，當時蓋茨還是個瘦瘦的、滿臉雀斑的毛頭小子，但是一點也不缺乏雄心壯志。

????最近播出的那集《60分鐘》訪談節目使觀眾得以一窺艾倫純粹的生活方式。不過艾倫告訴《財富》雜志，目前他還沒有看過那期節目。艾倫目前單身，他給人的印象是個才華橫溢，又似乎與世隔絕的人，身邊件件都是奢侈品，他的玻璃閣樓的毫宅高出街面幾百英尺。因為這幾點，《60分鐘》的主持人萊斯莉?斯泰爾兩次將他比為美國已故航空大亨霍華德?休斯。

????“我現在要上很多的電視節目，有時候我只想一鼓作氣地搞定，”他說：“我們在幾周前錄制了這個節目，然后它就播放了，我只想在上以后的節目時有新鮮感。”

????公平地說，《謀士》一書中并非只講述了微軟的故事。此外還有一些章節與微軟全然無關，而是講述了艾倫的生活的其他方面，比如他對航天旅游業、美國在線（AOL）或Metricom的投資等——Metricom是一個最終流于失敗的移動數據提供商。不過大多數人之所以愿意掏錢買這本書，主要原因是由于他們想了解艾倫與比爾?蓋茨的復雜關系。他二人的關系一開始本來很好，但隨著微軟迅速成長成為一個軟件業巨頭，以及隨著蓋茨的哈佛同學鮑爾默入主微軟，掌管微軟的業務方面，艾倫與蓋茨的關系也隨之失衡。我們現在知道，當年蓋茨和艾倫之間的大吵大嚷乃是家常便飯，而艾倫更稱那一時期“簡直就是地獄”。

????艾倫回憶道：“我想當時微軟高層幾個人的個性風格是很不同的。在決策問題上，我是個非常邏輯化、非常愛思考的人。但不管是比爾?蓋茨還是史蒂夫?鮑爾默，他倆的嗓門都比我大得多，也更容易沖動。他們總是會爭辯一番，然后得出一個結論。這樣過了幾年，讓我身心俱疲。”

????不過他也很快指出，盡管他與蓋茨有很多分歧，但他和蓋茨之間還是有默契。

????“在解決問題上，我們是陰陽相濟的：其中一個人可能會說這個問題沒法解決，然后我們的角色就會此消彼長。在本書中，我寫到了當年我們在波士頓用不到兩個月的時間寫出了第一版BASIC語言的故事。比爾說這可能是我們做過的最好的技術代碼……這很有意思，而且我們感覺非常充實。不過隨著時間的推移，公司形成了一種發展軌跡，而角色的變化和人的風格卻沒有契合。這就是后來我為什么離開微軟。”

????從此以后，艾倫一直關注著微軟。微軟先是借Windows操作系統成了個人電腦市場的霸主，最近微軟又努力在移動和搜索領域保持一席之地，不過蘋果和谷歌已經分別在這兩個領域上搶占了鰲頭。（“現在每個公司都在硬件軟件兩手抓。”）艾倫暗示道，微軟在Windows Phone 7項目上要做的還很多。

????“作為一款初次發布的產品，WP7還是不錯的，但要想讓人們棄iPhone而用WP7的話……幾年前我曾到微軟做過一次發言。你看，現在買手機的人越來越多，你需要一款讓他們愛不釋手的產品，要么因為它的界面很獨特，要么因為它的操作感覺很獨特，要么因為它有獨特的功能。因此這是一個重大的挑戰。但是現在他們正在全力以赴。

????在這本書中，艾倫將微軟當前的問題歸咎于公司的領導層、公司的規模以及平庸的文化。以表現不佳者為例，艾倫寫道，一位微軟高管曾報怨道：“我真希望能把每個第四流的人都斃了。”微軟的有些產品發布差強人意，背后也許就是這些文化問題在作祟。

????艾倫表示：“即便在比爾?蓋茨離職前，有一段時期里，微軟推出了Vista以及IE（Internet Explorer）等一些其它產品，它們都不算出色的產品。那時公司并沒有強烈地專注于為消費者做產品，不過他們現在在這方面做得用心多了。”例如他提到了微軟游戲機Xbox 360的Kinect控制器，它解放了玩家的雙手，靠攝像機捕捉三維空間中的玩家動作進行操控。Kinect于去年11月上市，迄今已經賣出了1000萬臺。

????如果說艾倫在這么多年的經驗中學到了什么的話，那就是成功需要投入很多要素，如正確的團隊、正確的創意、正確的創新領域等。當問到微軟今天需要做些什么才能成功的時候，艾倫的回答相對來說很簡單：“準備競爭，具備一些反應的靈敏性。”

????對于一家他幫助建立的白手起家的公司來說，這是一個好的建議。

????譯者：樸成奎

????For decades, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen kept a low profile, or at least as low as his $14 billion fortune probably allowed. He's occasionally spotted on his $162 million private yacht, palling around with Brad and Angelina, and taking in a Seattle Seahawks or Portland Trail Blazers game -- he owns both teams, of course -- but by and large, he's shied away from the spotlight.

????Not anymore. Allen is everywhere now: a scintillating book excerpt in Vanity Fair about how co-founder Bill Gates and current CEO Steve Ballmer plotted to dilute his company shares, a 60 Minutes sit-down, even an appearance at the 92nd Street Y in New York City over the weekend. It's all to promote Idea Man, a tell-all spanning his days as a teen hanging out around his school's Teletype Model ASR-33 computer terminal with a gangly, freckle-faced -- but no less driven -- Gates to the present day.

????Allen told Fortune he hasn't seen the 60 Minutes segment which recently aired, a brief, but fascinating peek into his rarefied lifestyle. Currently single, Allen comes across as brilliant, if isolated, surrounded by extravagance, sheltered in an awesome glass loft space hundreds of feet above street level, to the point where interviewer Leslie Stahl compares him -- twice -- to Howard Hughes.

????"I'm doing so much TV right now, and sometimes I like to just blast through it," he says. "We shot it a few weeks ago, so it's done and it's out there, and I'm just trying to be fresh for these next few things."

????To be fair, Idea Man isn't just about Microsoft. There are wholly unrelated chapters dedicated to other aspects of his life, like his investments in space tourism, AOL or Metricom, a failed broadband mobile data provider. But the reason most people will pick it up will be to learn more about his complex relationship with Gates, one that started fine enough but lost equilibrium as Microsoft quickly grew into a software giant and Ballmer, a Harvard classmate of Gates's, joined to handle the business side. As we now know, shouting matches between Gates and Allen were common, and Allen even went so far as to compare that time as "being in hell."

????"I think there were different personality styles involved there," Allen reflects. "I'm a very logical, thoughtful person when you're talking about trying to decide something. Whether it's Bill or Steve Ballmer, they're much more high volume. Intense. They'll kind of argue something through and then come to a conclusion. After some years in that, it wore me down."

????But he's also quick to point out that despite all their disagreements, he and Gates had a rapport that simply worked.

????"We had this ability to be kind of a yin and yang on problems: one guy would say that's unsolvable, and our roles would flip back and forth. In the book, I talked about that first version of BASIC that we wrote in under 2 months back in Boston. Bill said that was probably the best piece of pure technical coding we ever did ... That was a lot of fun, and we were very complementary. But there this was kind of trajectory which happens in companies where over time, where roles change and people's styles don't mesh as well. That's why I ended up leaving."

????In the years since, he's kept tabs on Microsoft as it came to dominate the PC market with the Windows operating system and then more recently, struggle to keep up in areas like mobile and search where Apple and Google respectively excel. ("Now everybody is scrambling in both hardware and software.") On the subject of Windows Phone 7, he implies more work needs to be done.

????"It's not bad for a first release, but to get people to stop using their iPhones... Years ago, I went over to Microsoft to put in my two cents. Look, people are going to walk into a phone store, and you want something they're going to hold in their hand, and they're going to get excited about it immediately because there's something unique in the interface or the way it feels in their hand. Or its capabilities. So it's a big challenge, but they're pulling out all the stops."

????In his book, Allen attributes Microsoft's current problems to the company's leadership, scale, and mediocre culture. On the subject of under-performers for instance, he writes that one executive complained, "I wish I could shoot every fourth one." These culture problems are presumably behind some of the company's sub-par product releases.

????"Even before Bill left, there was a period when Vista and some of these other products like IE [Internet Explorer], well, they weren't great products," he says. "There wasn't the intense focus on doing products for the consumer, but now they've internalized that a lot more." To boot, he points to Kinect for the Xbox 360, a motion-sensing hands-free game controller that's sold 10 million units since launch last November.

????If there's anything he's learned all these years, it's that a lot of factors need to be in place for success: the right team, the right ideas, the right areas for innovation. But when asked what Microsoft needs to do to succeed today, Allen's answer is relatively simple: "be ready for the competition, and have some agility to react."

????Good advice for the company he helped build from scratch.