Nside our culture, we understand that even though we have some big businesses, new businesses start out small.

While there is no one recipe that fits all, there are elements of what Amazon does that help. You need to be clear with all of your stakeholders, with are you holding a ballet or are you holding a rock concert and then people get to self-select in.” Big Things Start Small Just don’t hold a ballet and advertise it as a rock concert. He says, “You can hold a ballet and that can be successful and you can hold a rock concert and that can be successful. We don’t even take a position on whether our way is the right way, we just claim it’s our way, but Warren Buffet has a great saying along these lines. Well, I think that if you’re straight forward and clear about the way that you’re going to operate, then you can operate in whatever way you choose.

When asked about the pressures of running a public company and meeting quarterly earnings expectations he said:

That’s how we do it and by the way, we have a lot of fun doing it that way. These three ideas, customer-centricity, long-term thinking and a passion for invention, those go together. If you’re going to invent, it means you’re going to experiment, you have to think long-term. Those are the three big ideas to think long-term because a lot of invention doesn’t work. What we’re really focused on is thinking long-term, putting the customer at the center of our universe and inventing. The three big ideas are (1) thinking on a different timescale, (2) putting the customer first, and (3) inventing. An interview with founder Jeff Bezos touches on the timeless lessons he’s learned for business success.

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