据约瑟夫·埃利斯(Joseph Ellis)说，做分析师最棒的地方在于，这份工作需要“在不同情况下的许多不同技能组合”。他不仅在23年的时间里在全美研究团队中出现了29次——这是他在该领域技能的可靠证据——他还开设了自己的连锁专卖店，并出版了一本关于微型鸟雕刻的书。这位69岁的老人显然相信，把想法和技能发展成最实际的应用是很重要的，多年来，他的许多客户都从中受益。埃利斯在哥伦比亚大学获得学士学位后，于1965年加入纽约银行;五年后，他在高盛(Goldman, Sachs & Co.)找到了一份负责零售业务的工作。他推动他的特权的最重要的方式之一是专注于他的分析的展示。他表示:“我发现，大多数经济学家的预测都毫无帮助，尤其是考虑到这些预测总是从一个坊间指标变化到另一个指标，没有一个明确定义的过程。”在20世纪70年代中期，他开发了一种跟踪经济数据的方法，这种方法使人们能够看到趋势的发展，关注真正的领先指标，并通过简单的图表向客户解释这些指标。(2005年，哈佛商学院出版社出版了他的书《Ahead of the Curve: A common Guide to Forecasting Business and Market Cycles》，该书列出了他的过程的基本原理。)当全美研究团队在1972年首次亮相时，埃利斯是其中之一，在零售业中排名第二。 By 1977 he had climbed to the top of the roster, and there he stayed until 1992. When Retailing/Specialty was carved out of the sector, in 1988, Ellis ranked in that one too. When we made further refinements, in the ‘90s, dividing the more general sector into Broadlines and Softlines, Ellis appeared on both lists — while continuing to rank in Retailing/Specialty. Over the course of his remarkable career, he finished in first place 19 times. Ellis left his full-time position at Goldman in 1994, working part-time until his official retirement in 2005. By then he had launched Blue Tulip, the gifts-and-paper specialty store that he started in 2001. Despite the fact that the chain grew to 24 stores, Blue Tulip filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009. Ellis attributes the store’s demise to his inability to find a head merchant. In retirement, Ellis has become an avid birdwatcher and gardener, and has parlayed his favorite hobby — collecting miniature bird carvings — into a full-blown project: In 2009 the University Press of New England published his Birds in Wood and Paint: American Miniature Bird Carvings and Their Carvers, 1900–1970. The skill sets that Ellis actively draws on remain as varied as ever.
——凯蒂·吉尔伯特
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