“It’s always day 1″

20 September 2009 BY Manolis Kounelakis No Comment

If ExponentialWeb was around on the 22nd of July 2009 I would have blogged about this then. Since it was not, you’ll have to excuse my two-month delay. On that day, Amazon bought Zappos and a video was released with Amazon’s Founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, talking about the acquisition. In the video, embedded below, Bezos talks briefly about the history of Amazon and why customer obsession drives their business strategy. He also lays out the reasons for the Zappos buy-out. He wraps up with something very simple but brilliant. In his own words:

“It’s always day 1. There’s always more invention in the future. Always more customer innovation. New ways to obsess over customers.”

There is a significant difference in saying “We can do more” and saying what Bezos said. Amazon’s founder’s words can be attributed to a super-optimistic 16-year old boy. I believe his words tell us a lot about how Amazon is managed. I was wondering if this visionary aura is transferred to all the levels of the organization. At the recent career fair in Carnegie Mellon University, I went over to the Amazon booth and asked them about this. The HR employee told me that in fact this aura is flowing in both ways; top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top. You can argue that there was no chance of getting an answer like “Naah, only Bezos feels like that…”. In any case, it’s great to hear that well-established companies are hunting vigorously for new innovations.

Bezos’ words struck me as very encouraging and inspiring to anybody seeking to create and innovate in the web. Being among those who don’t believe in the “we have seen everything” doctrine, I was reassured by the fact that Bezos came out and said what he did. Who knows whether a new thing like Twitter is designed ideally? Google Wave, for example, will fundamentally reinvent the way we interact with email. That’s big! And since ExponentialWeb is just starting out, I am looking forward to keeping up to date with the wave of new, big things happening out there. Cheers!