This was perfectly exemplified by a statement at their new product announcement today:<p>> "Fire tv has been a surprising success for us"<p><a href="https://twitter.com/fmanjoo/status/913105004369666048" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/fmanjoo/status/913105004369666048</a>
Having the ability to throw enormous amounts of human and monetary capital into many different projects simultaneously, plus top notch technical talent, certainly helps.
This article claims the secret to success is "trying new things." That's misleading because it implies that AMZN management doesn't have a strategic plan.
This is my first ever comment on Hacker News after reading it for years... Inspiring article. This is one of the tenets I’ve built my ‘career’ on. For me, constantly trying new things is not only a necessity in business, it’s something I can’t live without in life, because it’s so exciting. It’s utterly possible to ‘Fail Upwards’ and you can do what Amazon does, with very little resources too. I bring many ideas to life, a huge proportion of them don’t make tons of money, but that’s mostly not my metric of success. Living a life less ordinary and being creatively fulfilled are some of my primary drivers. I encourage anyone to try more of their ideas - and if you’re interested, my books and speeches cover this area of ‘constant innovation’ too - just Google ‘Shed Simove’. Post over. Cherry popped. Xxx