Unit 49
Book of Jeff Bezos
When one thinks of the individuals who have played a great role in the development of the Internet, names like Tim Burners Lee (developer of the World Wide Web), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Michael Dell (Dell Computer), Steve Jobs (Apple Computer) and Vint Cerf (Father of the Internet) spring to mind. Add Jeff Bezos to that list.
Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, which is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and ranked as the world's largest e-tailer. He is not exactly your typical CEO. In fact, everything about him and his company Amazon.com challenges convention. How else can you explain how a man who had an extremely successful career in Wall Street would leave his job, move across the US to Seattle, and start an e-company that would soon amass 10+ million customers in cyberspace?
Learn from competitors. Bezos seems as comfortable stealing ideas as he does inventing them. eBay is the rage? Amazon begins holding auctions. Google is getting the headlines and Web searching is the hot business? Bezos starts Amazon's own search engine, A9. And he is determined to make his company the Wal-Mart of the Internet. Bezos has admitted to his copycat skill. He said, "We watch our competitors, learn from them, see the things that they were doing for customers and copy those things as much as we can."
Hire very carefully -- you're creating an enduring culture. Bezos would rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person, Why? "Company Cultures aren't so much planned as they evolve from that early set of people. New employees either dislike the culture and leave or feel comfortable and stay," says Bezos.
Be stubborn and flexible. "If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon," Bezos says. "And if you're not flexible, you'll go against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve."
Focus on customers, not colleagues. "There are many ways to be externally focused that are very successful," Bezos says. "You can be customer-focused or competitor-focused." But he warns that "some people are internally focused, which may hurt the whole company."
Be simpleminded. Bezos loves making decisions based on hard data, but when that's not possible, he believes in the power of being "simpleminded," relying on common sense about what would be in the best interests of his customers.
Don't chase the quick buck. "Sometimes we measure things and see that in the short term they actually hurt sales," says Bezos. "But we do it anyway, because we believe that the short-term results probably aren't indicative of the long-term." |