Why is Bezo able to take risks into new territories? Because "we can analyze quantitatively rather than to have to make intuitive judgments." What's so great about this type of business model is that it does not rely on luck throughout the process. It only relies on luck at the front end of the risks, minimizing the risk throughout the enterprise. Bezo is the current king of data driven decisions, and I think that over time it's enabled Amazon to not only pass it's many competitors (buy.com / half.com / yahoo.com / google products etc.) but also quickly overcome dis-advantages. Compared to the amazing roll of luck, insight, cunning, and high risks / high rewards culture of Apple, Amazon is really the company to emulate. Without Jobs, can Apply keep it's streak alive? No one is certain. It sometimes feels that with each not product Apple is betting the company. That's certainly what people were saying about the ipad. And that's what makes watching Apple so thrilling. Without Bezos, Amazon appears to be poised to continue it's great leadership. Watching Amazon might not be as thrilling, but the details are simply spectacular. While Jobs may get the accolades, I think think that Bezos deserves the crown.
You have to admire Bezo's approach to new ideas...<p>"On the day you decide to give up on it (hypothetical idea), what happens? Your operating margins go up because you stopped investing in something that wasn’t working. Is that really such a bad day?"
I find the product development strategies of the major technology companies quite interesting. I'm talking about Eric Schmidt's "Gang of Four". [1]<p>On the one hand you have Apple. Apple innovates as good as, and perhaps better than the other three. But it doesn't have very many products. And while I have no knowledge of this, I'd bet it doesn't start-and-stop products as frequently as the others. And it probably doesn't have as many "active" products going on at any one time. (Maybe it does behind the scenes, but I would be surprised if it did.)<p>It may take some iteration and prototyping to see that you could actually turn an iPhone into a tablet.<p>But I'm pretty sure Jobs "saw" the tablet long ago. In his mind, it was just a matter of when.<p>In the case of Apple, I see experimentation occurring as a result of the vision laid out by Jobs and other senior executives.<p>When it comes to the others, Amazon, Facebook, and Google all seem to implement the "fail fast" strategy. In this case, experimentation leads to vision. Instead of vision leading to experimentation.<p>What's interesting is that Apple used to be more like the others. It had many products and segments. And very little vision. But that strategy brought it close to death. [2]<p>Discovery is important to all of them. But the journey seems to be different.<p>[1] <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110531/eric-schmidts-gang-of-four-doesnt-have-room-for-microsoft/" rel="nofollow">http://allthingsd.com/20110531/eric-schmidts-gang-of-four-do...</a><p>[2] I could see why Apple sets vision first because designing and developing physical products is different than organizing information and logistics.
What I was literally struck by was the fact Bezos seemed to echoing the book, Little bets how breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries. I've stated before that I believe that is directly related to the concept of lean startups <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2475535" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2475535</a>
> I can guarantee you that everything we do will not work<p>I suspect he means "not everything we do will work". Either that or he's hinting that it's time to sell AMZN.
This is a great quote on vision and execution: "We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details"<p>That "Why We Do This" doesn't change (and hence it's important to have the Why instead of 'here are X cool features') but the execution can differ. Great stuff from a great business leader.