法奶日報www.lulijen.com【已刊文章，請點閱版首左側目錄】
李開復先生英文自傳全書（連載【2】）
Chapter 1
Following My Heart
Around 8 a.m. on Aug. 5, 2009, the United Airlines flight 888 began landing. It was soon going to arrive at San Francisco International Airport, where I had passed through countless times.
I looked out the window. In front of my eyes was the San Francisco Bay in grayish blue, across which Golden Gate Bridge’s red paint softly glistened in the misty morning sun. The scenery seemed the same as every time I had seen it before.
It was hard to believe almost 37 years had passed since my first visit to San Francisco as a boy, and it had been 19 years since my first trip to Silicon Valley for a job interview with Apple. Looking back at those bygone years, I realized my life had been full of changes because I had made unconventional choices.
In 1990, I made the first career change of my life. I gave up a tenure-track assistant professor’s position at Carnegie Mellon University to develop new products for Apple. From then on, I made significant breakthroughs in technology, but faced unpredictable market conditions at the same time. I went through ups and downs. However, even in the worst hardships, I never regretted putting myself through ruthless challenges of the corporate world.
My decision to enter the field of high tech business was based on the lifelong motto I had acquired from a philosophy professor in college. Whenever facing a choice, I would always recall his clear voice saying, “Imagine two worlds, one with you and one without you. What’s the difference between the two worlds? Maximize that difference. That’s the meaning of your life.”
Had I stayed in academia, my life would have been much easier, but I would have kept writing papers that no one would read. In contrast, what I have done in product development has influenced the world.
When iTune and QuickTime became hot commodities, I was no longer working for Apple. But I felt a sense of achievement about them as they came out of Apple’s Interactive Multimedia Department, which I had created. It didn’t matter to me that I wasn’t there to share Apple’s success in multimedia.
Pioneers don’t have to reap in the field they have discovered. A natural born pioneer would rather leave for uncharted territories to make new discoveries.
By summer 2009, I had served as a pioneer for Apple, SGI, Microsoft and Google. I had founded Microsoft Research Asia and Google China. At this point, as Google China prospered, wouldn’t it be time for me to move on, to once again explore the unknown and build another venture from the ground up?
I had just completed my four-year term with Google China. In those four years, Google China provided the most accurate and timely Chinese language search, which helped increase Google’s market share in China from 16.1% to 31%. Google Maps, Google Mobile Maps, Google Mobile Search and Google Translate all became the most used software products in China. Most notably, Google Music created the world’s first advertising-funded legal music download.
It always made me smile when I walked into a coffee shop in China and saw young people downloading songs from Google Music, getting directions from Google Maps, or looking for information through Google’s universal search. I knew Google China’s business had truly taken off. Our hardest times were over.
I appreciated the more than 700 employees of Google China for all they had done in the past four years. It was their brilliance and persistence that kept turning adversity into opportunity. To me, they were not just subordinates or colleagues. They were all my friends.
They were now waiting for me to continue leading them in the next four years. In the meantime, an email about my contract renewal awaited my reply. The amount of stock in the renewal offer exceeded my expectations. The largest Internet company in the world was expecting me to bring its latest products, namely Android, Chrome and Google Wave, into the China market.
I didn’t reply to the beckoning email because I was going to respond to the generous offer in person. As I stepped toward my rental car in the parking lot of San Francisco International Airport, I asked myself, “Are you ready to give Google the answer?”
A cool wind from the San Francisco Bay brushed by me, refreshing my head and my mind. I quietly but firmly told myself, “Yes, I’m ready.”
I opened the door on the driver’s side of my rental car, sat in, and entered “1600 Amphitheater Parkway, Mountain View” into the car’s GPS, which immediately indicated the trip would take 45 minutes.
I started the engine.
歡迎各界惠賜各類創作稿件，email：lulijen46@gmail.com
並歡迎轉載，但務請註明出處----編者
【法奶日報www.lulijen.com 2012.7.3.出刊，第9681號】