Amazon Will Continue to Take Big Bets Through the Downturn

Yesterday, Andrew Ross Sorkin interviewed the CEO of Amazon Andy Jassy at the NYT Dealbook Summit. He said a lot of familiar things I won't repeat here, but outside of that he said one thing that stuck with me.

Especially in a time where there are layoffs and cost-cutting he was asked about these big projects like Kuyper (satellites), etc, that Amazon is investing in.

While acknowledging the risks to big bets, he also reflected back on the tremendous internal and external skepticism to early Amazon efforts with Cloud/AWS. Essentially saying, yes we will streamline costs in particular areas (fulfillment/parts of Alexa), but we will not stop taking big bets on things that we will consider for the long-term.

While smaller companies don't have the luxury of wasting a lot of money on 5-10 year initiatives like Amazon does, it does speak to a critical idea for any corporation: the willingness to experiment.

Your pipeline of product innovation, more than anything else, will determine the future of your business -- in fact, even much more so than your recent economics -- as long as that innovation is focused on the needs of customers.

And I think that last statement is the key difference. If you have been innovating in an area that is not appreciated by a customer in terms of convenience, reduced costs or other ways, then stop that innovation today. This is not a black or white rule by definition but innovation requires judgment, long-term thinking, patience, luck and timing!

Early in my career, I hated to hear about trying projects again we had tried in the past "didn't we already do this?" but mostly I failed to appreciate the importance of timing and patience in bringing new ideas to market.

Trust me -- the alternative is much worse. Failure to innovate is the path to slow decay, followed by obsolesence. Truly successful innovation usually means people think you're an idiot for a long period of time before they come around to your idea.

No one can predict which particular innovation will make it, but those pointed in the direction of the things important to your business model and customer needs will always be worthwhile.