Adolescence: Nick D'Aloisio
豆蔻青春:尼克•阿洛伊西奥
How many pimply-faced adolescents salivate over a story like Nick D'Aloisio's? He taught himself to code at 12 and at 15 created a news summary app that prompted investor Li Ka Shing's Horizons Ventures to invest $300,000 in the technology. After a few more rounds of funding and a name change to Summly, D'Aloisio sold the app to Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) for a reported $30 million in March 2013, joining the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based tech giant from his home base in England. Now 17, he hobnobs with investors and advisers like Ashton Kutcher, Vivi Nevo, and Yoko Oko.
有多少脸上长着青春痘的少年少女们对尼克•阿洛伊西奥的故事向往不已?他在12岁时自学编程,15岁时打造出新闻摘要应用,促使投资者李嘉诚的维港投资(Horizons Ventures)向这项技术投资了30万美元。经过了其他几轮融资并更名为Summly之后,阿洛伊西奥在2013年3月以3,000万美元的价格,把这款应用出售给了雅虎(Yahoo),加入了这个总部位于加州森尼维尔的科技巨头,在英格兰的家中办公。现年17岁的他已经与阿什顿•库彻、艾维•尼沃和Yoko Oko等投资者和顾问称兄道弟。
"I try to maintain a level of humbleness to this," he told the Guardian newspaper, adding that his motivation wasn't simply monetary reward. "Because the motivation was technology and product, this is just the beginning of what I want to do."
“我想保持某种程度的谦逊,”他对《卫报》(Guardian)说,他的动机不只是金钱。“我的动机是技术和产品,对于我想做的事,现在这些只是一个开始。”
Research by University of Chicago economist David Galenson finds that innovators who make their mark early on in their careers tend to accomplish conceptual breakthroughs, as opposed to those who innovate through experimentation and laborious research -- which can take decades.
芝加哥大学(University of Chicago)经济学家大卫•加伦森的研究显示,不同于那些通过实验和辛勤研究来创新(这可能需要数十年)的人,在职业生涯早期就崭露头角的创新者往往能实现观念性的突破。
"There are two very different kinds of people who make innovations. The people who are traditionally regarded as geniuses are the people I refer to as conceptual. They have a brand-new idea," says Galenson, author of Old Masters and Young Geniuses. "The ability to form new abstractions tends to be greatest early in your career."
“有两种截然不同的创新者。传统上被视为天才的人就是我所说的实现观念性突破的人。他们拥有全新的创意,”《高龄大师和年轻天才》(Old Masters and Young Geniuses)的作者加伦森说。“形成全新抽象概念的能力在职业生涯早期往往最为重要。”