IF IN DOUBT, INVENT!
IF IN DOUBT, INVENT!
Amazon is the single best example of an innovation-driven enterprise. It’s a company that has relentlessly built new businesses alongside its existing ones. Some of these new businesses have been complementary; some have cannibalised the existing ones. Protecting existing earnings is not a priority.”
What can we learn from this master of reinvention?
Amazon’s continual self-reinvention flows naturally from Jeff Bezos’ famously customer-focused approach. “We’ve had three big ideas that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful,” he has said. “Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.”
“If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering. We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards.”
When disruption hits, in any industry, the incumbent can struggle to address the threat, aka the opportunity, because they’re so stuck in what they are used to doing. One of the ways of overcoming this is to “eat your own lunch,” Silicon Valley-speak for building a business that cannibalises your existing offerings. In 2007, Amazon launched the Kindle, an electronic book reader which, if successful, would directly affect its existing business of selling traditional books. The sceptics (“Nobody is going to sit down and read a novel on a twitchy little screen. Ever” – fiction writer Annie Proulx) were proved wrong within weeks.
The pace of innovation at Amazon is made possible by Bezos’ belief that most problems can be solved through invention, through bringing smart people together to find a better way. The old-fashioned view of strategy – that you figure out what your core competencies are and build everything around those – is turned on its head. Here, you’ve got the exact opposite: “We can always learn to do new stuff – if there’s a customer need we can buy and find the skills to do it.”
If ever in doubt, invent!