比尔盖茨的致富秘诀：获取科研成果

　　Lesson 3: Acquire Research Results by Hiring and Buying 通过购买或者雇人获取科研成果

　　Conventional economic wisdom holds that monopolies should spend heavily on research. But if you want to become as rich as Bill Gates, you have to remember that it is cheaper to wait for a small company to come up with something good and then buy them. In the old days, antitrust laws kept monopolies from buying potential competitors. But not anymore. When Microsoft products were threatened by network computers and Wed-based applications, they simply bought WebTV and Hotmail.

　　根据传统经济学的经验，垄断者应不惜重金搞科研。但是如果你想成为和

比尔盖茨一般的富人，你就必须记得买小公司研发出来的好东西比自主研发所花的成本要更为低廉。过去，反垄断法禁止垄断大户收购其潜在竞争者。但是今非昔日。当微软的产品受到来自网络计算机和基于网络的软件的威胁时，微软采取的仅仅是购买了互联网传输流媒体技术以及电子邮件系统技术的策略。

　　Another good strategy is to hire the right people. Some of the guys who wrote Microsoft Windows had previous worked on window systems at Xerox PAPC. So Xerox paid for the research; Microsoft paid only for development.

　　另一个成功的策略就是雇佣了正确的一批人。好些替微软视窗卖命的年轻人原先都效命于施乐公司帕洛阿尔托研究中心。所以说，这个研究中心支付了微软系统的研发费用，而微软仅仅支付了这套系统的改良费用。