In February 2013, my wife and I moved to Singapore. Exactly at the same time, Uber has announced it started operations in the country. Now, my wife and I agree on a lot of things, but using Uber was definitely not one of them.

2013 年 2 月，我和妻子搬去了新加坡。与此同时， Uber（优步）宣布在新加坡开始运营。我和我妻子在很多事情上都保持一致的态度，但使用 Uber 绝不是其中之一。

While I was excited about the technology and how maybe we don't need to own cars anymore, she felt that every Uber car is here to steal jobs from taxi drivers. And Sarah was not the only one.

我对这项科技感到兴奋不已，认为它可能意味着我们以后再也不用养私家车了，她却认为每一辆在这儿的 Uber 都在从当地出租车司机手里抢工作。莎拉（我妻子）并不是唯一一个这么想的人。

As the Ubers, Airbnbs and Amazons of the world -- what we call "online marketplaces" -- as they started expanding their presence, we have heard, all of us, countless policymakers worried about how to deal with these new risks of job destruction, lower wages and tax leakage. 

当全世界的“在线市场”—— Uber (优步)，Airbnb (爱彼迎)， Amazon (亚马逊) 等开始拓展业务时，我们所有人也能听到无数的政策制定者都在担忧如何应对它们带来的新风险：对就业市场的打击，工资缩水，和税收下降。

We've also heard company leaders worried about aggressive competition from global platforms eating up their local businesses. And on the rational level, of course I understand.

我们也听说过公司领导人担心这些环球平台带来的激烈竞争会蚕食他们的当地企业。从理性的角度讲，我当然能理解。

After all, this is basic supply and demand economics. If, in any market, you dramatically increase supply, you should expect prices, profitability and growth to go down for existing players.

毕竟，这是经济学基本的供需关系模型。如果你在任何一个市场大幅增加供给量，那么市场价格、收益率和经济增长对于现有参与者来说就会相应下降。

But in my personal experience, I've also seen the other side of the story. Where online marketplaces, like Gojek in Indonesia or Jumia in Africa, have helped their business ecosystems and the communities around them. 

但以我个人的经验来看，我也见过与之截然相反的情况。像印度尼西亚的 Gojek，非洲的 Jumia 等在线市场，实际上反而能帮助当地的商业生态系统和周围的社区。

The positive side I have seen demonstrated itself in a woman, a taxi driver in Egypt, that now had the opportunity to work without the harassment she faced in the taxi business. It demonstrated itself through a village in Kenya that got an economic boost, because the nearby beautiful but completely unknown lake is now becoming a national ecotourism spot.

我所见到的积极一面在一位女士身上体现了出来。她是埃及的一位出租车司机。她现在可以有机会在一个不会受到出租车行业那样骚扰的环境下工作。这种好的方面同时也在肯尼亚一个取得经济增长的村庄中得以体现，因为当地附近的一个美丽而又完全与世隔绝的湖泊现在已经成为了一个国家级生态旅游景点。

Online marketplaces will continue to grow. And they will transform the way we shop, the way we travel and the way we transact with each other. So we really need to understand where is the truth between those two stories. 

在线市场未来还会持续发展。并且它们将会变革我们购物、旅行和与他人交往的模式。所以我们现在需要弄清楚，这两种故事，到底谁是真相。

Should we expect more of the bright side or more of the dark and worrying side? And is there a way to get the first without getting the second? I believe there is.

我们应该期待好的一面会发生，还是觉得不好的、引人忧虑的一面会发生？有没有可能只有好的一面会发生？我相信这种可能是存在的。

As a strategy consultant, I study businesses for a living. And as a mathematician at heart, I couldn't live with something and its opposite being equally true. So, I went back to fundamentals, and I asked the question: What do online marketplaces really do? What do they do?

作为一名战略顾问，我以研究商业模式谋生。并且作为一名数学爱好者，我无法忍受两个完全相反的事物被认定为同样正确。所以，我问了一个比较基本的问题：在线市场究竟在做什么？它们在做什么？

Well, at their core, they're doing something very simple. They match sellers and buyers. That's it. For drivers and passengers, you get Uber, Grab in Southeast Asia or DiDi in China. 

它们的核心原理其实非常简单，就是将卖家与买家进行配对。就这么简单。对于配对司机和乘客，我们有 Uber、东南亚的 Grab, 还有中国的滴滴。

For matching merchants and consumers, you get Amazon, Alibaba or Jumia in Africa. And for housing, you get Airbnb; for fundraising, you get Kickstarter -- the list goes on. 

对于配对商家和消费者，我们有Amazon (亚马逊)，阿里巴巴，和非洲的 Jumia。对于租房，我们有 Airbnb (爱彼迎)；对于筹款，我们有 Kickstarter——诸如此类。

What all these examples have in common is that they transition this basic functionality of matching sellers and buyers from the physical world to the digital world. 

而这些例子的共同点就是他们将配对买卖双方的基本功能从实体世界转移到了电子世界。

And by doing so, they can find better matches, do it faster and ultimately, unlock more value for everyone. In fact, online marketplaces' core benefit is that they get us more from the same amount of effort.

通过这种方式，他们能更好、更快地配对买卖双方，并且最终能让每个人都得到更多价值。事实上，在线市场的核心价值就在于我们付出同等努力，能从中获得更多回报。

For example, if you're a taxi driver in San Francisco and you decide to work 10 hours per day, then you're actually having a paying passenger in your car for four hours out of the 10.

比方说，如果你是旧金山的一名出租车司机，你打算每天工作十个小时，那么你每天十个小时里将有四个小时在服务顾客。

If you take the same car and put it on a platform like Uber, you can have paying passengers for an additional one and a half hours. This is the same car becoming 40 percent more productive. And the same has been proven true for other online marketplaces. By design, they create more value for the economy.

但如果你把同样的这辆车放到像 Uber 这样的平台上，那么你每天就可以有额外一个半小时在服务顾客。同样一辆车就比以前多了 40% 的收益。同样的道理在其他在线市场也适用。它们的设计就决定了能为经济发展创造更多价值。

Now, we need to figure out who gets this additional value. You can give it to the drivers -- more passengers, more income. You can give it to consumers, if you reduce prices. Or you can decide that the platform gets to keep all of it. What usually happens is that all three of them would somehow split it. But what about the rest of us?

我们现在需要弄清楚，究竟是谁得到了这些额外的价值。你可以把这些多余的利润给司机，更多的乘客意味着更多的收入。你也可以通过降低乘车价格，把这些利润分给乘客。或者你也可以决定由平台保留全部利润。通常的情况是这三方都会分得利润的一部分。但这对于其他人意味着什么？

We can also be impacted without being on either sides of this business. If my neighbor decides to rent his apartment on Airbnb, and we have more people coming in and out of the building, more noise than usual, then I'm getting an unpleasant side effect of this productivity magic. 

尽管并不处于这种商业模式的任何一侧，我们也可能受到影响。如果我的邻居决定在 Airbnb上出租他的公寓，我们居住的这栋楼就会有更多人员出入，带来比以往更多的噪音，那么这种提高效率的商业魔法就会带来令我不快的副作用。

This is what economists would call a "negative externality." The negative externality of Uber cars becoming more productive is taxi drivers seeing the value of their licenses drop by as much as 30 percent in New York, for example. This is the dark side. And this is what sparks street demonstrations and sometimes, sometimes, even violence.

经济学家通常将其称为“负面的外部效应”。以纽约为例，Uber 车变得更有效率所带来的“负面的外部效应”是让出租车司机的牌照贬值高达百分之三十。这就是其黑暗的一面。而这也是引起街头示威的导火索，有时甚至会导致暴力冲突。

I profoundly believe this is avoidable. And it became clearer to me the more I have spent time in emerging markets. In fact, during my time in Singapore, I spent half of any given week traveling in the region, between Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and I became a user -- actually, more of a fan -- of online marketplaces that were not that well-known back then.

我深切地认为这是可避免的。我在新兴市场待的时间越长，就越觉得如此。事实上，在新加坡的那段时间里，我每周都会花一半的时间在马来西亚、泰国、印度尼西亚之间往返，于是我成为了一名使用当时还不太普及的在线市场的用户——更确切地说，是一名粉丝。

But some of them made interesting strategic trade-offs that dramatically reduced their side effects, their externalities. Take Gojek, for example. They're basically Uber for motor bikes. They are one of the most liked online marketplaces in Indonesia, and this has a lot to do with the role they chose to play. 

其中一些在线市场做出了有趣的策略性取舍，从而大幅减轻了它们的副作用，也就是那些“外部影响”。以 Gojek 为例，他们本质上是摩托车界的 Uber，也是印度尼西亚最受欢迎的在线市场之一，而其中很大一部分原因在于他们选择扮演的角色。

Instead of picking a fight with every other transportation option out there, they choose to gradually integrate them within their own platform, so that without leaving the Gojek app, you can check the public transportation schedule and choose to take a bus for a long distance. Then, maybe, a motorbike or a traditional taxi that you can order and pay for from within the same app. 

他们选择将其他交通方式逐渐整合到自己的平台中，而不是与其进行竞争。所以用户不需要切换出 Gojek 的应用，就能查看公共交通时间表，选择公交车作为长途出行的工具，或选择摩托车，传统的出租车，这些预约和付款都可以在同一个应用中进行操作。

If you look at Gojek today, nine out of 10 previous motor taxi drivers believe their quality of life has improved after joining the platform. And nine out of 10 consumers -- nine out of 10 -- believe that Gojek has a positive impact on society in general.

根据 Gojek 现在的数据，十个前摩的司机中就有九个认为在加入这个平台之后生活质量得到了改善。十个用户中有九个， 90% 的用户——认为，总体而言，Gojek 对社会产生了积极的影响。

Now, this level of trust is what allowed Gojek to grow into what is today a super online marketplace for everything from food to grocery even massages and laundry pickups. 

正是这种程度的信任使得 Gojek 成长为现在这样一个从食品杂货，甚至是按摩，洗衣店衣物提取等服务都涵盖到的一个超级在线市场。

It all came from a deliberate trade-off to be an orchestrator of a bigger ecosystem where others also have their role to play, instead of a single winner, a hero, that takes for himself what would, at the end, be a smaller pie.

而这一切都源于一个经过深思熟虑的取舍决定：成为更大的生态系统中的协调者，让其他人也能参与进来，而不是成为单一的赢家，“英雄”，到最后只能分到一个更小的“蛋糕”（利润）。

Another interesting example is Jumia. Jumia is the equivalent of Amazon in Africa. But they don't generate the same level of fear in the small-business community. And one of the reasons for that is because they have decided to actively invest in African entrepreneurs, to grow them into the digital age.

另一个有趣的例子是 Jumia， Jumia 相当于非洲的亚马逊。但他们不会让小企业圈产生对 Amazon 那种程度的担忧。其中的一个原因是它们决定积极投资非洲的创业者，帮助他们成长，以融入到数字时代中。

Now keep in mind, Jumia is operating in countries with some of the lowest digital literacy and digital connectivity scores in the world. Now they could have dealt with that the usual way, through lobbying for reforms -- and they probably do that -- but they have also built Jumia University, an e-learning platform where merchants can come and learn basic digital and business skills.

请大家考虑到一点， Jumia 是在世界上数字素养 (运用电脑及网络资源的能力) 和数字连接得分最低的几个国家进行经营。他们可以通过使用传统方法——为普及计算机进行游说，他们可能也正在这么做，但同时，他们还建造了 Jumia 大学，一个在线学习平台，通过它，商家能学到基本的电子和商业知识。

We have studied online marketplaces in Africa last year. And during that study, we have met one of Jumia's merchants. His name is Jomo. He was fired from his job in 2014, and at that time, he decided he wanted to become his own boss. He wanted to be independent. He also wanted to never be fired again. 

去年，我们研究了非洲的在线市场。在研究过程中，我们认识了一名使用 Jumia 的商户。他叫 Jomo。他在 2014 年被解雇，在那时，他决定要当自己的老板。他想变得独立，再也不想被解雇了。

So at that time, Jomo had no clue what a business is. So he needed to go through a series of trainings to learn how to select products, how to price them and how to promote them online. Today, Jomo has a 10-employee online business. And as of a few months ago, he just opened his very first brick-and-mortar shop in the suburbs of Nairobi. 

但在那时， Jomo 对做生意一窍不通。他需要接受一系列培训，来学习该如何选择商品，如何为它们定价，以及如何在网上推销这些产品。现在，Jomo 的在线生意已经拥有了十名员工。就在几个月之前，他刚在内罗毕 (肯尼亚首都) 郊区开了自己的第一家实体店。

Now, through its university, Jumia has the potential of helping a huge number of Jomos. And we have estimated that together with other online marketplaces on the continent, they can generate three million additional jobs by 2025. And they would do that either directly, or through their impact on the wider community.

通过这所大学， Jumia 将有潜力帮助到更多像 Jomo 一样的人。根据我们的估计，到 2025 年， Jumia 和其他在非洲的在线市场将能创造约三百万个额外的工作岗位。他们可以直接提供工作，或通过对更广大社区的影响，帮助就业。

And sometimes, taking that wider impact into consideration or forgetting about it can make or break a platform. To illustrate that, let's go back to Singapore. So, when we decided with my wife to leave the country last year, Uber decided to do the same. At the same time, again, we started to see that pattern, but maybe it's a coincidence. In reality, Uber lost the ride-hailing battle to a Malaysian-born start-up called Grab.

有时，是否有考虑到对更广大群体造成的影响将决定一个平台的成败。为了说明这一点，让我们回到新加坡。去年，我和妻子决定离开新加坡，与此同时， Uber 也做出了同样的决定。在那时，我们又开始看到那个规律。但也许那只是一个巧合。事实上，Uber 在即时用车领域输给了始创于马来西亚的初创公司 Grab。

Now, interestingly, my wife didn't have the same level of concerns with Grab, because when Grab started, it had a different name. It was called MyTeksi, and as the name suggests, it started as a platform for taxis.

有趣的是，我妻子对 Grab 并没有和对 Uber 同样程度的担忧。因为 Grab 最开始有另一个名字， MyTeksi（“我的出租车”），顾名思义，它刚开始是一个针对出租车的平台。

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