题记： 美国弗吉尼亚大学达顿商学院的萨拉斯（Saras Sarasvathy）教授（其导师是诺贝尔经济学奖获得者赫伯特·西蒙）提出的效果推理（Effectuation）理论概括了一种超越古典决策逻辑的、解释创业者在不确定环境或市场不存在的情况下，创建新企业的独特行为的最有说服力的理论之一。这一理论在十余年间获得学界高度关注和广泛认可，被认为是创业研究领域最具原创性的成果。为深入了解萨拉斯教授的研究过程、研究方法及其成果——效果推理（Effectuation）理论的核心观点、理论精髓，从本期开始“子谦译文”将分5期连载萨拉斯教授在2001年发表的一篇重要研究文献——《是什么赋予创业者创业力？》（What makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurial?）。
本译文为五篇连载的第2期。
Effectual reasoning: The process
效果推理：过程
所有创业者都会从三类资源开始：
他们是谁——他们的特质、个性和能力;
他们知道什么——他们受过的教育、培训、专业知 识和经验;
他们认识谁——他们的私人网络和专业网络。
从这些资源出发，创业者设想能够用它们创造出的可能效果，并开始实施。多数情况下，他们基于手边最近的资源迈出一小步，几乎是直接付诸行动，而没有预先精心策划。与通过精心策划和按部就班的执行来实现目标的因果推理不同，效果推理更灵动鲜活的使执行力融入其中。通过每天的行动和与他人的互动，计划被制定、推翻、修改、迭代。然而，在某些特定的时刻，总会有一个有意义的“画面”（译者：即愿景）使团队凝聚在一起，一个引人入胜的故事会吸引更多的利益相关者加入，并开启一段在未知领域“绘图”的持续行程。通过行动，效果型创业者的资源和因此可能产生的一系列效果发生改变并重新配置。最终，某些新产生的效果融合成明确可行且令人向往的目标——一块指向清晰路径的路标在荒野中日渐显露。
然而，在我们的课堂上，我们教给那些潜在的创业者一个极其偏向因果推理的序列流程——从想法到市场研究，再到财务预测、团队、商业计划、融资、原型制作、市场，再到退出，当然还有意外会发生的警告。但是，经验丰富的创业者知道，意外不是让我们偏离路径。相反，它们是一种常态，意外就像丛林中的动植物，人们学会根据动植物（即意外，译者）所在位置在丛林中开辟出一条道路。意料之外的东西正是创业经验的素材，将不可预测的事物转化为司空见惯的事物是专家型创业者关注的特殊领域。
让我们对比一下两种流程是如何在一个简单的餐厅创建案例中运作的。想象一个创业者打算创办印度餐馆。如果按照我们通常教授的因果过程，她首先将对她所选城市的餐饮业进行市场调查；根据市场调查，非常谨慎地选择一个地点；并规划性的细分市场;根据潜在回报的预估选择目标细分市场；设计一家可吸引目标群体的餐厅;筹集所需资金;汇集她的团队;最后，实施具体的市场策略并管理日常运营，使她的餐厅开办成功。而如果按照效果过程，则一切取决于我们的创业者是谁，她知道什么以及她认识谁。为了理解这个流程，先让我们假定她是一位正在考虑创办独立企业的优秀印度厨师。假设她自己的钱很少，她有什么方法可以把她的想法推向市场呢？当把这个议题用作课堂练习时，学生通常会建议一些行动方案，例如与现有餐厅合作、参加民族食品博览会、设立餐饮服务等。让我们设定，她决定采取的实际行动方案是说服在市中心工作的朋友允许她带午餐给他们办公室的同事品尝。然后，一些顾客报名午餐服务，于是她开始在家准备食物并亲自递送午餐。最后，她可以攒下足够的钱租一个地方并开办一家餐馆。
但同样可能的是，午餐业务的数量并没有超出最初的几个客户，而我们的创业者发现，客户实际上对她的民族哲学和生活经历、印度文化或她其他方面的个性、兴趣、专业知识等感兴趣。然后，她可以根据随后的反馈决定开始不同业务中的任何一个。举例几个可能性，她最终成功的企业可能会出现在以下任何一个或所有行业——教育、娱乐、旅游、制造和包装、零售、室内装饰，甚至是自助服务和激励！
下图以图形方式描绘和对比了因果营销过程与效果营销过程。现实生活中应用效果过程创业的例子比比皆是，至少可以追溯到十八世纪，这些有关效果推理的故事渗透并充斥着创业史：
举个例子
⊙ 在十八世纪，一位名叫乔西亚·韦奇伍德（Josiah Wedgwood）的陶工意识到，陶罐可以承载人们对社交流动的渴望;
⊙ 在二十世纪，国王吉列开始构思创造一种客户想要反复购买的东西，一天早上他剃须时，偶然萌发了一次性剃刀这个想法;
⊙ 汤姆.法图（Tom Fatjo）在休斯顿是一位受人尊敬的专业人士，在郊区细分会议上，他筹建后来的垃圾巨头BFI，以解决社区垃圾处理问题;
⊙ 临近二十一世纪，一位名叫罗布·格拉泽（Rob Glaser）的前微软高管在尝试建立一个具有渐进内容的交互有线电视频道时，爱上了Mosaic浏览器，并开始以真实网络的形式让静音网络发声，于是RealPlayer诞生了。
（未完待续，敬请关注续篇。本文转载请注明出处,侵权必究）
作者——Saras D. Sarasvathy
译者——师柔剑
审稿——吴现波
配图——邵逸清
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附原文
All entrepreneurs begin with three categories of means: (1) Who they are – their traits, tastes and abilities; (2) What they know –their education, training, expertise, and experience; and, (3) Whom they know – their social and professional networks. Using these means, the entrepreneurs begin to imagine and implement possible effects that can be created with them. Most often, they start very small with the means that are closest at hand, and move almost directly into action without elaborate planning. Unlike causal reasoning that comes to life through careful planning and subsequent execution, effectual reasoning lives and breathes execution. Plans are made and unmade and revised and recast through action and interaction with others on a daily basis. Yet at any given moment, there is always a meaningful picture that keeps the team together, a compelling story that brings in more stakeholders and a continuing journey that maps out uncharted territories. Through their actions, the effectual entrepreneurs’ set of means and consequently the set of possible effects change and get reconfigured. Eventually, certain of the emerging effects coalesce into clearly achievable and desirable goals -- landmarks that point to a discernible path beginning to emerge in the wilderness.
Yet, in our classrooms, we teach potential entrepreneurs an extremely causal process – the sequential progression from idea to market research, to financial projections, to team, to business plan, to financing, to prototype, to market, to exit, with the caveat, of course, that surprises will happen along the way. Seasoned entrepreneurs, however, know that surprises are not deviations from the path. Instead they are the norm, the flora and fauna of the landscape, from which one learns to forge a path through the jungle. The unexpected is the stuff of entrepreneurial experience and transforming the unpredictable into the utterly mundane is the special domain of the expert entrepreneur.
Let us consider how the two processes operate in the simple case of building a restaurant. Imagine an entrepreneur who wants to start an Indian restaurant. In the causal process that we teach, she would start with some market research into the restaurant industry in the city of her choice; select a location very carefully based upon the market research; segment the market in a meaningful way; select target segments based on estimates of potential return; design a restaurant to appeal to her target segments; raise the required funding; bring her team together; and finally, implement specific market strategies and manage daily operations to make her restaurant a success. In the effectual process, it would all depend on who our entrepreneur is, what she knows, and whom she knows. For the sake of understanding the process here, let us say she is a good Indian chef who is considering starting an independent business. Assuming she has very little money of her own, what are some of the ways she can bring her idea to market? When used as a class exercise, students usually suggest courses of action such as partnering with an existing restaurant, participating in ethnic food fairs, setting up a catering service and so on. Let us say that the actual course of action she decides to pursue is to persuade friends who work downtown to allow her to bring lunch for their office colleagues to sample. Let us further say that some customers then sign up for a lunch service and she begins preparing the food at home and delivering lunches personally. Eventually, she could save up enough money to rent a location and start a restaurant.
But it could equally be plausible that the lunch business does not take off beyond the first few customers, but instead our entrepreneur discovers that the customers are actually interested in her ethnic philosophy and life experiences or Indian culture or other aspects of her personality or expertise or contacts or interests. She could then decide to go into any one of several different businesses contingent upon the ensuing feedback. To cite but a few possibilities, her eventual successful enterprise could turn out to be in any one or all of the following industries -- education, entertainment, travel, manufacturing and packaging, retail, interior decoration, or even self-help and motivation!
Figure 2 graphically depicts and contrasts the causal marketing process with the effectual one. Real life examples of effectual processes in entrepreneurship abound. In fact, the stories of effectuation permeate and saturate the history of entrepreneurship since at least as far back as the eighteenth century: In the eighteenth century, a potter named Josiah Wedgwood, realized that pots can carry people’s aspirations for social mobility; in the twentieth, King Gillette began toying with the idea of creating something that customers would want to repeatedly re-purchase and while shaving one morning, hit upon disposable razors as a possibility; Tom Fatjo, a respectable professional in Houston, practically got dared into founding the garbage giant BFI during a suburban subdivision meeting to solve the community’s garbage disposal problems; and closer to the twenty-first century, while trying to build an interactive cable channel with progressive content, an ex-Microsoft executive named Rob Glaser fell in love with Mosaic, and set out to give voice to the mute Web in the form of Real Networks; and so it goes.