第2799期:This TED Talk is full of bad ideas(2)

So you've probably figured out by now that I'm not actually here to sell you keys to a car. Today I'm here to talk to you about bad ideas. The kind of ideas that typically die on the vine because reason or work colleagues get in the way. But to me, these are the most exciting ideas because you just never know what might happen.你们大概已经猜到了，我其实不是来卖车钥匙的。今天我想谈的是“坏点子”。这种点子通常在一开始就会被扼杀，因为理性思考或同事的否决会把它挡在路上。但在我看来，这些恰恰是最令人兴奋的点子，因为你永远不知道它们最终会变成什么。

Take these crazy-looking shoes, for example. I think it was like the spring of 2023. My colleagues and I were sketching out the initial prototypes of the Big Red Boot. I remember us being equal parts terrified because, of course, like, who's going to wear these, much less spend money on them? But at the same time, the moment that we put on the initial prototypes ourselves --就拿这双长得很疯狂的鞋子来说吧。我记得那大概是 2023 年的春天，我和同事们在画 Big Red Boot 的最初原型。当时我们既兴奋又害怕，因为很自然的想法就是——谁会穿这种鞋？更别提花钱去买了。但与此同时，当我们自己第一次穿上原型鞋的那一刻——

We were filled with such a chaotic sense of glee that we were like, you know what, we just got to do it. So we committed to making a couple hundred pairs, we priced them at 350 dollars and we just prayed that there would be a few hundred people out there in the world who would spend money on these crazy-looking things.我们心里涌起了一种混乱却强烈的喜悦感，于是我们想：“算了，不管了，干吧！”于是我们决定做几百双，把价格定在 350 美元，只能祈祷世界上会有几百个人愿意花钱买下这种看起来疯狂的东西。

So a week before the drop, we leaked this image through a friend's Instagram account. Again, just hoping that people don't hate it, or even worse, that they don't ignore it. In hindsight, we needn't have worried. The algorithm smiled quite fondly upon the Big Red Boot, and all of a sudden this thing was everywhere. Like, I don't even, I can't even. It's basically like a blur. I don't understand what happened.在正式发售前一周，我们通过一个朋友的 Instagram 账号泄露了这张照片。再次，只是希望人们不要讨厌它，更不要完全无视它。结果回过头来看，我们根本不需要担心。算法很“宠爱”这双 Big Red Boot，突然之间，它火遍了各个角落。老实说，我甚至都说不清楚是怎么回事，一切都像是一阵模糊的旋风。

All of a sudden, people were wearing them courtside at NBA games. I saw Lil Wayne wearing them in amusicvideo. I remember my dad calling me and saying, "Hey, Gabe, there's a professional WWE wrestler wearing your boots on live pay-per-view TV. And he just curb stomped another guy."转眼之间，人们穿着它出现在 NBA 球场边。我看到 Lil Wayne 在一支音乐录影带里穿着它。我还记得我爸打电话告诉我：“嘿，Gabe，有个职业 WWE 摔跤选手在付费直播里穿着你的靴子，他刚刚用它踩翻了另一个人。”

It's incredible. And yet we almost didn't do it. This is almost where it ended. Just as an internal project on the cutting room floor. People told us it was not a great business decision. And honestly, I get it. But what started as a bad idea ended up becoming a very interesting idea.这太不可思议了。但我们差点就没做这件事，差点它就停留在内部项目阶段，被放在角落里废弃。很多人告诉我们，这不是一个很好的商业决策。说实话，我理解他们的想法。但一个最初的坏点子，最终却变成了一个非常有趣的点子。

Here's another one. The idea was an ATM machine. Totally normal, functional, operational, extremely legal ATM machine, with one catch. Attached to the ATM machine, as you see, is a digital leaderboard that ranks people based on the amount of money in their remaining account balances.再来一个例子。这次的点子是一台自动取款机。完全正常、功能齐全、合法合规的 ATM 机，但有一个特别之处：在 ATM 机上安装了一块电子排行榜，它会根据用户账户的剩余余额多少来对他们进行排名。