Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos delivers graduation speech at Princeton University

After all, where else can a few clicks of a mouse take you from the latest novel by Tony Morrison to an 18th century edition版本 of the works of John Lockach, having

毕竟，除了这里，还有哪里能让你通过几次鼠标点击，从托尼·莫里森的最新小说瞬间跳转到约翰·洛克十八世纪的作品集？

stopped in power tools and women's shoes along the way.

途中还会顺便浏览电动工具和女鞋等商品。

Yet, the founder and chief executive officer of the world's largest retailer, whose net sales surpassed超过 24.5 billion in 2009, is only 46 years old.

然而，这位全球最大零售商的创始人兼首席执行官年仅46岁，其2009年的净销售额已突破245亿美元。

And Amazon.com has only existed since 1995, making it even younger than the class of 2010.

亚马逊网站直到1995年才成立，甚至比2010届的毕业生还要年轻。

The moral of this story is that the right idea in the right hands at the right time can change the way we lead our lives.

这个故事告诉我们：正确的想法、合适的人选以及恰当的时机，足以改变我们的生活方式。

The idea in this case was harnessing利用 the power of the naent internet to create a virtual bookstore of limitless proportions.

当时的构想是利用互联网的力量，创建一个规模无限的虚拟书店。

The hands were those of our speaker, Jeff Bezos, a self-described nerdy commuter commu computer science and electrical engineering major who graduated from Princeton with highest honors in 1986.

而‘双手’的主人正是演讲者杰夫·贝佐斯，他自称是个书呆子气的通勤者，主修计算机科学和电气工程，于1986年以优异成绩从普林斯顿大学毕业。

And the time was 1994 when he and his wife McKenzie Tuttle Bezos of the class of 1992 exchanged the security安全感 of Wall Street where they worked at De Shaun Company for

而那个时机是1994年，当时他和妻子麦肯齐·塔特尔·贝佐斯（1992届毕业生）放弃了在德肖恩公司工作的华尔街安稳生活，

the uncertain prospects前景 of a dotcom startup.

去追求一家初创互联网公司充满不确定性的前景。

But then, as Jeff points out, failure is an essential component组成部分 of innovation and invention.

但正如杰夫所指出的那样，失败是创新和发明的必要组成部分。

If you know it's going to work, it's not an experiment.

如果你知道它一定会成功，那就不算实验了。

And Amazon.com was nothing if not a grand experiment.

而亚马逊网站绝非一场普通的宏大实验。

Working on improvised tables in the garage of his Seattle home and using his parents' savings as startup capital, Jeff defied the forces that cause most young companies to fail.

杰夫在自家车库用临时拼凑的桌子工作，并动用父母的积蓄作为启动资金， defiance了导致大多数年轻公司倒闭的种种力量。

Partly, he admits, through sheer纯粹的 good fortune, but also because of his unwavering determination to create the world's most customer centric company.

部分原因，他承认，是纯粹的运气使然，但也源于他坚定不移的决心，即打造世界上最以客户为中心的公司。

And as he notes in his company's latest annual report, of the 452 goals that Amazon.com has set for itself this year, 360 of them will directly affect the customer experience.

正如他在公司最新年度报告中所指出的那样，亚马逊今年设定的452个目标中，有360个将直接影响客户体验。

While the word revenue is used on only eight occasions, I do not advise you to start off with 452 goals this year.

虽然报告中“收入”一词仅出现了八次，但我并不建议你今年也设定452个目标。

by the way.

顺便提一句。

But this is just one of the keys to Jeff's success.

但这只是杰夫成功的秘诀之一。

Another lies in his exceptional ability to marry commerce and technology in creative ways in his sheer inventiveness and willingness to take the risks inherent固有的 in this process.

另一秘诀在于他非凡的能力：以富有创意的方式将商业与技术相结合，凭借他惊人的创造力以及承担这一过程中固有风险意愿。

Indeed, the history of Amazon.com is one of daring leaps飞跃.

的确，亚马逊的历史就是一部大胆飞跃的历程。

One such leap involved creating the capacity to search inside the books sold by his company.

其中一次飞跃涉及创建了在其销售书籍内部进行搜索的功能。

Not by designing a modest pilot project, but by committing the resources to make it possible to scour彻底搜寻 the text of more than 120,000 volumes when this feature debuted in 2003.

他们并非设计一个 modest 的试点项目，而是投入资源，使得在2003年该功能推出时，能够检索超过12万卷图书的全文。

Other innovations have included one-click shopping, online product reviews by customers, and of course, the Kindle reading device, which we test drove in three courses this fall.

其他创新包括一键购物、客户在线产品评论，当然还有Kindle阅读设备，我们今年秋天在三门课程中试用过它。

Mirroring the rapid growth of Amazon itself, the number of books available through the US Kindle store topped 460,000 in 2009, just two years after its launch.

随着亚马逊自身的快速增长，美国Kindle商店的图书数量在2009年突破了46万册，而这距离其推出仅仅两年时间。

And there's no turning back.

而且，这已无回头路可走。

Our vision is every book, every printed in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds.

我们的愿景是：任何语言、任何印刷版本的书籍，都能在不到 60 秒内获取。

Jeff has stated an audacious大胆的 proposition to be sure, but as Al Albert Einstein once observed, if at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.

杰夫确实提出了一个大胆的设想，但正如阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦曾指出的那样：“如果一个想法起初听起来荒谬，那它就没有希望。”

Perhaps the American Academy of Achievement summarized our speaker's impact best when it noted, "Having already revolutionized彻底变革 the way the world buys books, Jeff Bezos is now transforming the way we read

或许美国成就学院最恰当地总结了这位演讲者的影响力，他们指出：“在彻底改变了世界购书方式之后，杰夫·贝佐斯现在正在改变我们阅读的方式。”

them as well."

也是如此。