Notes

Building Block 1: 
Customer-Obsessed Business Model

  1. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Kristin Pryor, “A History of Amazon’s Amazing Acquisitions,” https://tech.co/news/history-amazon-acquisitions-2016-05.
  4. Interviews with Amazon executives.
  5. Interviews with Amazon executives.
  6. Bezos 2018 Shareholder Letter.
  7. Ibid.
  8. Amazon 2018 Annual Report, https://ir.aboutamazon.com/annual-reports.
  9. Bezos 2008 Shareholder Letter.
  10. Bezos 1998 Shareholder Letter.
  11. Bezos 2008 Shareholder Letter.
  12. Bezos 2017 Shareholder Letter.
  13. Bezos 2018 Shareholder Letter.
  14. Bezos 2001 Shareholder Letter.
  15. Bezos 1999 Shareholder Letter.
  16. The law of diminishing returns is an economic principle stating that as investment in a particular area increases, the rate of profit from that investment, after a certain point, cannot continue to increase if other variables remain constant. As investment continues past that point, the return diminishes progressively. (https://searchcustomerexperience.techtarget.com/definition/law-of-diminishing-returns)
  17. Bezos 2001 Shareholder Letter.
  18. Amazon 2018 Annual Report, https://ir.aboutamazon.com/Capital IQ
  19. Bezos 2017 Shareholder Letter.

Building Block 2: 
Continuous Bar-Raising Talent Pool

  1. John Rossman, The Amazon Way, Clyde Hill Publishing, 2014.
  2. Amazon Leadership Principles, https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles.
  3. Bezos 2003 Shareholder Letter.
  4. John Rossman, The Amazon Way, Clyde Hill Publishing, 2014.
  5. The Everything Store, Brad Stone, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  6. Bezos 1997 Shareholder Letter.
  7. Amazon 2010 Annual Report, https://ir.aboutamazon.com/annual-reports.
  8. The Everything Store, Brad Stone, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  9. Ibid.
  10. Ibid.
  11. bid.
  12. Bezos 2017 Shareholder Letter.

Building Block 3:
 AI-Powered Data and Metrics System

  1. Bezos said at the Yale Club in New York City in February, 2019.
  2. W. Edwards Deming was a legendary business thinker and pioneer in quality control.
  3. Interviews with Amazon execcutives, and The Amazon Way, John Rossman, 2014.
  4. Bezos 2009 Shareholder Letter.
  5. John Rossman, The Amazon Way, Clyde Hill Publishing, 2014.
  6. Amazon 2002 Annual Report, https://ir.aboutamazon.com/annual-reports.
  7. Bezos 2002 Shareholder Letter.
  8. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  9. Ibid,
  10. Ibid.
  11. Bezos 2018 Shareholder Letter.
  12. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  13. Bezos 2014 Shareholder Letter.

Building Block 4: 
Ground-Breaking Invention Machine

  1. Chip Bayers, “The Inner Bezos,” Wired, 1999, https://www.wired.com/1999/03/bezos-3/.
  2. Bezos 2015 Shareholder Letter.
  3. John Sviokla, “Innovation Lessons from Amazon”, Harvard Business Review, 2008, https://hbr.org/2008/05/innovation-lessons-from-amazon.
  4. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York
  5. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  6. Bezos 2018 Shareholder Letter.
  7. Bezos 2015 Shareholder Letter.
  8. Collis, David, Andy Wu, Rembrand Koning, and Huaiyi CiCi Sun. “Walmart Inc. takes on Amazon.com.” Harvard Business School Case 718-481, January 2018. (Revised May 2018.)
  9. Bill Taylor, “How Coca-Cola, Netflix, and Amazon Learn from Failure,” Harvard Business Review, 2017, https://hbr.org/2017/11/how-coca-cola-netflix-and-amazon-learn-from-failure.
  10. Jeff Bezos, 2018 Shareholder Letter.
  11. Jeff Bezos, 2018 Shareholder Letter.
  12. Bill Taylor, “How Coca-Cola, Netflix, and Amazon Learn from Failure,” HBR, 2017, https://hbr.org/2017/11/how-coca-cola-netflix-and-amazon-learn-from-failure.
  13. Bezos interview with David Rubenstein at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., 2018.
  14. Interviews with Amazon executives.
  15. Morgan Stanley Research, Dec. 6, 2018.
  16. Bezos interview with David Rubenstein at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., 2018.
  17. Amazon 2018 Annual Report, https://ir.aboutamazon.com/annual-reports.
  18. Interviews with Amazon executives.
  19. Amazon 2018 Annual Report, https://ir.aboutamazon.com/annual-reports.
  20. John Rossman, The Amazon Way, Clyde Hill Publishing, 2014.
  21. Bezos 2017 Shareholder Letter.
  22. John Rossman, The Amazon Way, Clyde Hill Publishing, 2014.
  23. Bezos 2018 Shareholder Letter.
  24. Bezos interview with Charlie Rose Show, 2012.
  25. Bezos 2018 Shareholder Letter.
  26. Bezos 2018 Shareholder Letter.
  27. John Rossman, The Amazon Way, Clyde Hill Publishing, 2014.
  28. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  29. Amazon 2018 Annual Report, https://ir.aboutamazon.com/annual-reports.
  30. Bezos 2010 Shareholder Letter.
  31. Bezos 2011 Shareholder Letter.
  32. Bezos 2014 Shareholder Letter.

Building Block 5: 
High-Velocity and High-Quality Decision Making

  1. Bezos 2016 Shareholder Letter.
  2. Bezos 2015 Shareholder Letter.
  3. Bezos 2015 Shareholder Letter.
  4. Bezos 2015 Shareholder Letter.
  5. Bezos 2015 Shareholder Letter.
  6. Ram Charan with Geri Willigan, The High-Potential Leader, Wiley, 2017, Hoboken, NJ.
  7. Bezos 2016 Shareholder Letter.
  8. Bezos interview with David Rubenstein at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., 2018
  9. http://www.feynman.com/science/the-challenger-disaster/back
  10. Daniel McGinn, “How Jeff Bezos Makes Decisions,” Harvard Business Review, 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/10/how-jeff-bezos-makes-decisions.
  11. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  12. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  13. Morgan Stanley Research, Dec. 6, 2018.
  14. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  15. Cass R. Sunstein, “Disagreement Results in Better Decision,” HBR, 2015, https://hbr.org/2015/08/amazon-is-right-that-disagreement-results-in-better-decisions.
  16. Amazon Leadership Principles.
  17. Bezos 2016 Shareholder Letter.
  18. Bezos 2016 Shareholder Letter.
  19. Bezos interview with David Rubenstein at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., 2018
  20. Bezos 2016 Shareholder Letter.
  21. Bezos 1997 Shareholder Letter.
  22. Bezos 2017 Shareholder Letter.
  23. Bezos 2017 Shareholder Letter.
  24. John Rossman, The Amazon Way, Clyde Hill Publishing, 2014.
  25. Bezos 2012 interview with Charlie Rose.
  26. Samir Lakhani, “Things I liked about Amazon,” Aug 27, 2017, https://medium.com/@samirlakhani/things-i-liked-about-amazon-4495ef06fbda.
  27. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  28. Ibid.
  29. Ibid.
  30. Bezos 2010 commencement speech at Princeton.

Building Block 6: 
Forever-Day-1 Culture

  1. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  2. As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. Our approach remains the same, because it’s still Day 1. (Bezos 2014 Shareholder Letter)
  3. Bezos 1998 Shareholder Letter.
  4. Bezos 2015 Shareholder Letter.
  5. Bezos 2016 Shareholder Letter.
  6. Bezos 2016 Shareholder Letter.
  7. Bezos 2016 Shareholder Letter.
  8. John Rossman, The Amazon Way, Clyde Hill Publishing, 2014.
  9. Ibid.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Bezos 2015 Shareholder Letter.
  12. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  13. Amazon Leadership Principles.
  14. Amazon Leadership Principles.
  15. John Rossman, The Amazon Way, Clyde Hill Publishing, 2014.
  16. Bezos 2013 Shareholder Letter.
  17. Bezos 2008 Shareholder Letter.
  18. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.
  19. http://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.htmlback
  20. Brad Stone, The Everything Store, Little, Brown, and Company, 2013; Back Bay Books, 2014. New York.