Jeff Bezos' Letter to Shareholders
In this turbulent global economy, our fundamental approach remains the same. Stay heads down, focused on the long term and obsessed over customers. Long-term thinking levers our existing abilities and lets us do new things we couldn’t otherwise contemplate. It supports the failure and iteration required for invention, and it frees us to pioneer in unexplored spaces. Seek instant gratification – or the elusive promise of it – and chances are you’ll find a crowd there ahead of you. Long-term orientation interacts well with customer obsession. If we can identify a customer need and if we can further develop conviction that that need is meaningful and durable, our approach permits us to work patiently for multiple years to deliver a solution. “Working backwards” from customer needs can be contrasted with a “skills-forward” approach where existing skills and competencies are used to drive business opportunities. The skills-forward approach says, “We are really good at X. What else can we do with X?” That’s a useful and rewarding business approach. However, if used exclusively, the company employing it will never be driven to develop fresh skills. Eventually the existing skills will become outmoded. Working backwards from customer needs often demands that we acquire new competencies and exercise new muscles, never mind how uncomfortable and awkward feeling those first steps might be.
- Welcome To A Blog About The Best And Worst In Customer Service
Welcome to The Business of No - a blog about the best and WORST in the world of customer service. Every been treated like crap at an airport? Ever been given a hotel room overlooking a grave yard? Ever been treated like Julia Roberts shopping on Rodeo...
- Jeffrey Bezos, Washington Post’s Next Owner, Aims For A New ‘golden Era’ At The Newspaper
Jeffrey P. Bezos, the next owner of The Washington Post, says he doesn’t have all the answers for what’s ailing the newspaper industry or for the financially challenged news organization he is preparing to buy. But he says he’s eager to start asking...
- Jeff Bezos' 2012 Letter To Shareholders
Our heavy investments in Prime, AWS, Kindle, digital media, and customer experience in general strike some as too generous, shareholder indifferent, or even at odds with being a for-profit company. “Amazon, as far as I can tell, is a charitable organization...
- Amazon's Kindle 2 Slims Down, Adds Audio
New York – A little more than a year after the Kindle made its debut, Amazon announced a new, updated version of its popular e-book reader Monday with a big endorsement from Stephen King. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos demonstrated the features of the new...
- Gmo: Quarterly Letter – Jeremy Grantham
My second theory would be even harder to prove, and this is it: that CEOs are picked for their left-brain skills – focus, hard work, decisiveness, persuasiveness, political skills, and, if you are lucky, analytical skills and charisma. The “Great...