I presented my synopsis of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone, this morning at the First Friday Book Synopsis. (We were a week late, because… “ice-day make-up session”).
What a terrific book! It is a business strategy and execution book. It is a vision and innovation book. It is a “keep the customer in mind – please the customer, every time, all the time” book. It is a “this is the way the world is changing” book.
And, on top of all that, it is a good read… I really liked it!
My synopsis will be up soon on our companion site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com. My handout for this book is especially “comprehensive,” and might be worth a careful look. Here are a couple of key points.
First:
• Amazon’s “Greatest Hits” – in no particular order
• Amazon sales rank – authors became obsessive over their rank
• 1-click ordering
• Customer reviews
• Search the book
• Sample pages
• Kindle (so easy a Grandmother could use it)
• “Stolen employees”
• Algorithms!
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Startups like Pinterest and Instagram rent space and cycles on Amazon’s computers and run their operations over the Internet as if the high-powered servers were sitting in the backs of their own offices.
• Amazon Prime
• “It was really about changing people’s mentality so they wouldn’t shop anywhere else.”
• And, of course – they get you your stuff quickly; very quickly!
And, here are my takeaways from the book:
1) Luck does play a part. Jeff Bezos had this vision at just the right time (the birth of the internet, as we know it).
2) Jeff Bezos shares a critical trait with Steve Jobs – a focus on the customer experience; empathy for the customer (great “advocates” for the customer — not the consumer; the customer).
3) Jeff Bezos is a details man. And he was a learner about every detail he could master.
4) Work ethic is, and always will be, critical.
5) First the idea, then the plan, then the execution.
6) Spend money only on that which directly helps the customer.
7) Move fast. Very fast. Very, very fast.
8) “Disrupt” yourself – your own company – before someone else does.
• Reflecting on The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen. The premise is simple: whatever you are now doing will change, dramatically. Some disruption in the force will put the old ways out of business. So, since this is true, you be the one to do the disrupting – on purpose. Disrupt yourself, or someone else will do it to you.
If you have any responsibility in your organization for moving things forward, this is a very good book to read carefully. If you want a framework to help you think about ways the world is changing, this book can help you do that.
A good book!
First Friday Book Synopsis 