3 guiding principles behind Amazon's success

 

The secret of Amazon's success story

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="3200"] Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos[/caption]

Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, in his book 'Amazon Sells Everything in the World', revealed the secret of Amazon's success story: the 'Amazon truth'.

"We are genuinely customer-centric, we are looking at this business long term, and we enjoy being creative"

"Most companies don't"

“They focus on their competitors, not their customers. They want to invest in something they can make a profit in two or three years, and if things don’t go well, they find another way to do business.”

"Also, most companies prefer to follow the creator by a narrow margin rather than create. It's safer that way."

"That's what makes us unique. Few companies focus on all three."

"This is the Amazon truth"
(Jeff Bezos)

Click 'About Amazon' on the Amazon site now.

ㅇ Customer obsession (rather than focusing on competitors)
(customer obsession)
ㅇ passion for invention
ㅇ operational excellence
ㅇ long-term thinking

Of these, 'excellent operation' can be seen as a natural result of 'customer obsession and 'long-term thinking'.

The remaining three principles

In this article, we will discuss the remaining three principles.

(1) Customer obsession: Why do you still use the 'door desk'?

Amazon uses the word 'customer obsession', not customer satisfaction or customer satisfaction.

This is Amazon's first and most basic norm.

American companies are thinking about how to outperform and outperform their competitors.

This sense of competition is revealed not only in general companies but also in the world of IT dinosaurs.

Apple's Steve Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates also viewed each other as enemies and fought.
There was a time when

Amazon is more obsessed with its customers than its competitors. Before a meeting, Bezos would bring an empty chair and say,

"The most important seat in this room, where the customer sits."

Amazon uses more than 500 metrics to measure performance.

More than 80% of these are customer-related.

Many companies say 'customers come first, but few actually do it.

Amazon is famous for its frugality. Unlike Google, which is famous for its welfare, Amazon does not have free meals and only offers tea and coffee for drinks.

The symbol of Amazon's poor culture is the famous 'door desk' or 'door desk desk'.

Bezos, who started Amazon in his garage, built two desks out of the $60 doors he bought at Home Depot.

We are still using the modified version of the door desk. It is the will not lose the spirit of frugality.

These efforts are ongoing.

 

At the 2009 annual shareholders' meeting, Bezos announced that he had removed all the light bulbs from the vending machines in the cafeteria.

All the light bulbs installed to make the product more visible were removed.

This action saved tens of thousands of dollars a year in electricity bills. Tens of thousands of dollars is not even a piece of gum for Amazon.

Why did you do this?

"This door desk is a symbol of frugality and it's very important to Amazon in the sense that we only spend our money on what matters to our customers."

There are not many customers who will not be impressed by this message of saving even a penny and spending it on customers.

Bezos completes customer obsession with the following words:

"The customer is always right."

(2) Passion for Creation and success:

Continuous R&D and new products
“The Amazon ecosystem is getting bigger and stronger every day.”

This sentence from a Forbes article describes Amazon's passion for creation or invention. Amazon, which started as an online bookstore, has dominated e-commerce, distribution, and logistics, and is the No. 1 cloud platform (AWS) market.

 

It has advanced into entertainment, finance, and health care, and even created a company called 'Blue Origin' to advance into space.

The representative service I think is 'Amazon One'. In the United States these days, due to the coronavirus, when ordering takeout at a restaurant, customers must directly insert a credit card into the terminal to pay.

This is to minimize human-to-human contact.

Amazon One is a technology that enables personal authentication and payment by placing your palm on the terminal.

When the user links the palm information with the credit card, the palm image is encrypted and stored in the Amazon cloud platform 'AWS'.

After that, authentication and payment are completed by touching the palm of your hand for about a second in a non-contact manner.

Amazon has already introduced this technology to select 'Amazon Go' stores. Offline groceries 'Mart Whole Foods', sports stadiums, office buildings, etc.

We want to extend it elsewhere. Amazon One, a kind of identity authentication technology, is a service that can completely change our future.

Assuming this service applies to restaurants, shops, offices, airports, etc., it is easy to imagine how much time you can save.

Although biometric data collection is still controversial, security experts say that vein recognition technology is safer because it is harder to counterfeit than face or fingerprint recognition.

In this way, Amazon is already preparing for a post-Corona e-commerce service.

Cloud game service 'Luna', echo speaker, drone-mounted ring camera, and Fire TV stick were also unveiled.

With a passion for creativity, we continue to create these new services and products.

I remember the anecdote when Amazon first introduced its e-book service and reader 'Kindle'.

At a time when Amazon's online bookstore business was in full swing, e-book services could take a hit.

After appointing an executive who was in charge of the existing book division to the digital divide, he said this.

"Your mission is to kill the business you've built up."

“Please proceed with the digital business as if it would make everyone who sells paper books unemployed.”

(3) Long-term thinking: Amazon always looking into the distant future

Jeff Bezos met Capen's friend Stewart Brand at a party to celebrate the 4th anniversary of his fellow co-founder and Amazon's first employee, Shell Capen.

The brand, which was also the founder of the Long Now Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes long-term thinking, is supported by Bezos.

The Long Now Foundation has been making a long-now watch that has not stopped for 10,000 years, the so-called 'ten-year watch'.

This watch is being built on Bezos' Texas estate.

Standing at a height of 135 meters, the Perennial Watch moves very slowly, unlike a regular watch.

The second-hand moves only once a year, and the minute hand moves only after 100 years.

A regular clock cuckoos every 12 hours, but this clock can only hear an alarm once every 1000 years.

Steel and titanium were used to make it move slowly for 10,000 years.

The date of completion of the ten-year watch has not yet been determined.

The watch, which is yet to be completed, symbolizes Amazon's 'long-term thinking' principle.

Bezos believes that the secret to Amazon's success in this unique principle, and he wants to spread it to others.

He said he is sponsoring this project to emphasize a sense of responsibility and a forward-looking attitude, as advancing technology in the short term could lead to catastrophe in the future.

He looked at the Amazon truths in my life as well as looking at the three principles of Amazon, and it occurred to me that I could apply the truth to my personal life as well.

So, I write it down in the OneNote I use every day and try to apply it to my work and life.

Who are my customers? At work, you are your boss, and at home, you are family.

I look back at how satisfied I am with these customers.

We are also thinking about creativity and long-term thinking.

I think my life would be a little bit better if it wasn't a huge success like Amazon.

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