How Amazon Reshaped the World

Having conquered online retail, Amazon expanded expeditiously into cloud computing, media, and advertising. How? Bezonomics—the title of my book and the term I gave to CEO Jeff Bezos’s formula for success. It involves an obsession with customers, a mania for innovation, and a long-term point of view. But more than that, Bezos was first to deeply integrate data, machine learning, the internet of things, and A.I. into his company’s decision-making process, ensuring that Amazon would be driven by facts and radical transparency—and incredibly useful while working from home under lockdown.

BY BRIAN DUMAINE

I was amazed at how deeply A.I. is embedded in the company’s activities. Amazon was an early adopter of artificial intelligence, and has injected it into almost every aspect of its business. For example, the company used to conduct weekly retail reviews with up to 60 managers. They’d negotiate what to buy, how much, and which warehouses needed what amounts. Now, algorithms do all that. My biggest surprise? Finding out that Jeff Bezos was cloning himself throughout the organization. When I spent time inside Amazon, I learned that Bezos and his top lieutenants religiously use a shadowing program that has promising young managers follow their boss every day for two years. By the end, the “shadow” knows how Bezos and his best executives think and has internalized the Amazon formula to spread those…

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Inc. (Digital) - 1 Issue, May/June 2020

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