A Culture of Innovation@Scale | Lessons from Amazon

Building culture@scale requires values that impact Behaviors, Processes, and Practices that support successful outcomes in Decision-making, Accountability, and Innovation.

Building a culture at scale requires values that shape behaviors, processes, and practices—all of which drive decision-making, accountability, and innovation.

?? Creating Fertile Ground for Innovation

Innovation thrives when we create an environment where bold ideas can grow. At Amazon, a senior leader once noted that while our Regensburg, Germany team excelled in Insisting on the Highest Standards, they struggled with Think Big.

So, I created a Think Big Workshop—and it became one of my most successful.

For some in the workshop "Thinking Big" expanded their imagination about what was possible in their personal life, and others developed the courage and confidence to take their work ideas further. With coaching, one participant presented his Think Big idea to regional leadership, leading to a better customer experience and cost savings.

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?? Lesson: Creating structured opportunities for big thinking can unlock untapped innovation.

?? Inspiration from Industry Giants

Many top companies embed innovation into their culture:

Facebook promotes Be Bold Google gives employees 20% of their time to pursue passion projects Microsoft hosts the Global Hackathon for rapid experimentation

Nvidia empowers intrapreneurship by maintaining a culture described as "organized chaos," offering new hires significant responsibility from the start, which favors self-starters with initiative.

However, these strategies primarily serve knowledge workers. What about front-line employees who build physical products or deliver services? How do we ensure every employee contributes to innovation?

Four Key Leadership Principles for Innovation at Amazon

At Amazon, four leadership principles drive innovation. You’ll often hear phrases like:

??“Let’s Invent and Simplify to lower costs.”

??“Now that we’ve succeeded, how can we Think Big and scale further?”

??“Learn and Be Curious about ways to improve”

?? The Role of Earn Trust in Innovation

When I moved to Europe and joined the Prague startup community, I was curious—why were startups in Silicon Valley more successful than those in Berlin or Prague? Trust played a huge role.

In some regions, historical events (wars, political regimes) shaped low-trust cultures. In Prague, even the word “collaboration” had negative connotations. Trust isn’t assumed—it must be earned.

Even at Amazon, trust was up for debate. In 2015, when reviewing leadership principles, Jeff Bezos questioned whether Earn Trust was simply implied. Leaders like Jeff Wilke pushed back, citing times when a lack of trust led to damaging consequences.

Scaling an Innovation Culture Through Process

Amazon built processes to make innovation scalable:

?? Annual Think Big Competition → Open to all employees, much like Microsoft Garage or Google’s 20% projects

?? Skip-Level Meetings → Senior leaders engage directly with employees to surface new ideas. Kiran Kumar Gajavada shares useful suggestions in Skip-Level Meetings: A Powerful Tool for Boosting Employee Engagement and Morale

Scaling an Innovation Culture Through Practices

?? Long-term Thinking → Amazon prioritizes long-term value over short-term gains, giving it a unique ability to make bold bets.

?? Day 1 Thinking → Yesterday’s success (or failure) doesn’t define today. Every day is Day 1—a chance to push further.

?? Tolerance for Failure—Not Incompetence → The goal isn’t to celebrate failure but to celebrate learning. According to HBR, the key is distinguishing productive vs. unproductive failures—a message senior leadership must reinforce.

The cliché “celebrating failure” misses the point—we should be celebrating learning, not failure.

Conclusion

A sustainable culture of innovation is essential for survival in a rapidly changing landscape. The rapid adoption of AI with ChatGPT showed us that change has shifted from years to months.

Not surprisingly, all the Culture 500 companies did well in Innovation, with Amazon as the leader.

While Amazon leads in innovation, Amazon revealed a weak spot in Collaboration, which is surprising with their high scores on Execution and Agility.

Alphabet and Apple did not do much better, despite it being one of Apple’s stated values. It seems to be a widespread weak spot. It was an acknowledged struggle at my last company. So, the story has yet to be written on a culture of collaboration@scale.

Series Conclusion

As Jim Jordan said in “Understanding the Importance of a Scale Up Culture

"achieving sustainable growth requires the development of a scale-up culture. It involves instilling a mindset of growth, innovation, and adaptability throughout the organization."

For companies that are growing fast and need to scale their culture, Amazon’s culture is worthy of exploration. It has stood the test of time.

What are the most important behaviors for your company’s success?

ChatGPT was used to revise this article

#Culture@scale, #companyculture #leadershipdevelopment

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