挺過失敗 一家劇院集團的創業心路
We’re standing in a remote cornfield somewhere in Ireland, on a weekend away from our office in the West End. There isn’t a person in sight. We are uncomfortably close to the cliff edge.
我們站在愛爾蘭一個偏遠的玉米地裏，這是我們的週末短假，暫別倫敦西區的辦公室。這裏看不到一個人影。我們的位置靠近懸崖邊緣，有點嚇人。
“The business can’t afford us both. One of us has got to go.”
“企業負擔不起我們兩人，有一人必須得離開。”
I wonder exactly what my partner (in business and life) has in mind. It’s the last thing I want to hear but he is right. It was the early 1990s. We were a small production company with just one theatre. We were extremely vulnerable. Our imperative was not about dreaming up great shows but keeping the business alive. Hence our al fresco review of the salaries budget.
我揣測我的（工作和生活中的）同伴究竟在想什麼。這是我最不願聽到的話，但他說得沒錯。當時是上世紀90年代初。我們是一家僅有一家劇院的小型製作公司。我們極爲脆弱。我們的當務之急不是夢想製作出偉大的話劇，而是讓企業生存下去。因此我們在戶外野餐時評估了工資預算。
At this point it seemed that my new career as an entrepreneur was about to come to an end.
在那一刻，我的創業者生涯看上去即將結束。
We had lured John Malkovich away from Hollywood to star in Dusty Hughes’ A Slip of the Tongue. A megawatt star and a writer with impeccable pedigree. What could go wrong? But the ideal playhouses were unavailable and we were pressured into presenting it at the Shaftesbury Theatre, a musical house where the play felt lost. Despite decent reviews, it limped through a limited run and we lost our investment.
我們曾吸引約翰氠爾科維奇(John Malkovich)離開好萊塢，領銜主演劇作家杜斯泰休斯(Dusty Hughes)創作的《口誤》(A Slip of the Tongue)。大牌明星，大牌劇作家。怎麼可能出錯？但我們找不到理想的劇院，因此不得不在沙夫茨伯裏劇場(Shaftesbury Theatre)上演這部話劇，而那是音樂劇場，不太適合這部話劇。儘管評論還不錯，但它僅僅勉強上映了幾場，我們的投資打了水漂。
Add to this a new theatre in Woking, launched at the height of summer in the teeth of a recession. The box-office sales reports made grim reading.
這還不算，我們在沃金(Woking)的新劇院在經濟衰退期間的盛夏時分揭牌。票房異常慘淡。
Right content, right theatre, right time — easy to say, so hard to achieve when you don’t control all the variables. It wasn’t enough to be a great creative producer, it was clear in that cliff-edge moment that our success was dependent on factors outside our influence. So we set out to take control: to run a business across the three industry segments of production, venue ownership/management and ticketing. This allowed us to shorten the odds; to engineer the right conditions for creativity to flourish.
合適的內容、合適的劇院，合適的時間——這些都是說起來容易，做起來卻很難，因爲你控制不了所有的變量。成爲一個偉大的創意製作人是不夠的，在靠近懸崖邊緣的那一刻，我一下子醒悟過來：我們的成功取決於處在我們影響範圍外的因素。於是我們着手控制整個流程：經營製作、場地所有/管理和售票這三塊業務。這使我們得以降低失敗機率，也爲創造力的迸發創造合適條件。
“You can’t produce a hit show to order. It has to grow organically, it has to be nurtured,” said our creatives, but dark theatres eat money and staff have to be paid, a constant juggle of cash flow and overheads. It was essential to balance creativity and pragmatism, and my role was enabler.
我們的創意人員說：“你不能根據訂單製作出熱門劇。它只能內生式發展，它必須得到培育。”但是有大量空座的劇院大廳是燒錢的，我們還得給員工發工資，始終爲現金流和人力之間的平衡發愁。有必要平衡創意與務實，我的角色就是促成這一切。
Being a start-up was all about trying things out. We gave our creatives the freedom to develop work with leeway to experiment but not carte blanche to spend up to the max. Sometimes financial constraints brought about more imaginative work. And failure is part of the creative process. What we had to do was make sure it was not catastrophic, that we could learn the lessons and move on fast.
初創企業的意義就在於大膽嘗試。我們讓創意人員自由嘗試開發作品，但沒有授權他們把預算全部花光。有時財務限制會讓作品更具想象力。而失敗是創作過程的一部分。我們必須做的是確保失敗不是災難性的，我們能從中汲取教益，然後迅速翻開新的一頁。
Start-up finance came from like-minded individual investors who shared our appetite for controlled experimentation. The most valuable lesson we took was to confront failure and analyse it — often a painful thing to do — to gather evidence of customer behaviour and the factors influencing the decision to buy.
創業融資來自志趣相投的個人投資者，他們與我們一樣都對受控的實驗感興趣。我們獲得的最有價值的教訓是直面失敗，分析失敗（往往是很痛苦的事情），收集有關客戶行爲的證據，掌握影響購買決定的因素。
Our growing database gave us a unique insight into theatregoing in the UK — a valuable asset.
我們不斷壯大的數據庫也讓我們對英國人上劇院看戲的行爲有了獨特的洞察，這是一筆寶貴的資產。
We decided to expand our own creative assets by forming a number of subsidiary companies. This allowed us to retain key creative people who wanted a separate brand, independent recognition for their work, and who were happier and more productive working at arm’s length.
我們決定組建一些子公司來擴大我們的創作資產。這讓我們能夠留住關鍵的創作人員，他們希望擁有單獨的品牌、對他們作品的獨立認可，而且在一定距離下工作更快樂、更高產。
Sonia Friedman Productions, our first partnership, resulted in a string of hits. As parent company, Ambassador Theatre Group provided an environment for this producer to flourish. We used a similar model with First Family Entertainment, a pantomime production company, and with Jamie Lloyd Productions to inject creative dynamism into Trafalgar Transformed.
Sonia Friedman Productions是我們的第一個合作伙伴關係，它產生了一系列重磅作品。作爲母公司，大使劇院集團(Ambassador Theatre Group)爲這家制作公司提供了蓬勃發展的環境。我們採用了類似的模式與第一家庭娛樂（First Family Entertainment，一家啞劇製作公司）和Jamie Lloyd Productions的合作，爲Trafalgar Transformed注入創意活力。
We have been able to grow the business exponentially, largely thanks to investment from private equity. There have always been preconceptions surrounding theatre as a stable growth opportunity but fortunately we found partners with the imagination to make that conceptual leap.
我們的業務之所以能夠實現指數級增長，在很大程度上歸因於私人股本的投資。人們始終先入爲主地認爲，劇院是穩定的增長機遇，但幸運的是，我們找到了合適的合作伙伴，他們擁有讓這種概念實現飛躍的想象力。
Risk is now spread: we own or operate more than 40 theatres worldwide, have a number of ticketing brands and a creative resource that is the sum of our production division and its partner companies.
現在風險已經分散：我們在世界各地擁有或運營逾40家劇院，有許多票務品牌，還有創作資源，它涵蓋我們的製作部門和夥伴公司。
International expansion will bring challenge — another essential component of creativity — as exposure to other markets and new partners such as recently acquired BB Group (a European producer/promoter) bring new ideas and ways of working into the business, and huge opportunities.
國際擴張將帶來挑戰（這是創造力的另一個關鍵因素）和巨大機遇，因爲進入其他市場和新的合作伙伴（比如最近收購的一家歐洲製作/推廣公司BB Group）帶來了新的創意和業務處理方式。
