Introduction
Jeff Bezos is the richest man on Earth. He is the first and only centi-billionaire with a net worth of $112 billion. How did Bezos become the richest man alive? He created Amazon.com. Originally known as Cadabra Inc., Amazon.com began as an online bookstore and grew to be the largest retailer in the world. Bezos turned his online book store into a multi-faceted powerhouse. Other than their retail store, Amazon has a cloud service, their own line of e-book readers, smart speakers, and their own multimedia streaming service with original movies and TV shows. Amazon has come a long way since their creation in 1995 and will continue to branch out to different markets including pharmaceuticals and even the grocery store market with
…show more content…
There have been several failures, but Bezos states that, “He would not be where he is today without failure.” He also notes that, To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there. (Kim, 2016)
This business strategy has led to many failed lines of business in the organization, such as Amazon Destinations and Amazon’s Fire Phone. Millions of dollars have been wasted on failed attempts, but according to Bezos’ philosophy, Nine times out of ten you are going to fail, but every once in a while you hit a homerun that in business terms is more like 1,000 runs, given a 10% or 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time. (Kim, 2016)
As such, Bezos excels in experimenting and trying new tactics. He is not afraid to step out as a leader and do things the way he sees fit. Jeff Bezos himself states that, Our passion for pioneering will drive us to explore narrow passages, and, unavoidably, many will turn out to be blind alleys. But - with a bit of good fortune - there will also be a few that open up into broad avenues. (Amazon.com/Jobs,
The most obvious technological advance that helped Amazon, and the one that launched the company, was the internet (Parnell, 2014). Jeff Bezos knew that he wanted to open an online business and decided to start with a bookstore due to low pricing and an existing worldwide demand (”Amazon.com, Inc. History”, n.d.). After deciding on a model, he chose Seattle as a home for his business due to its proximity to high tech workers and a large book distributor. The website opened with a database of more than one million titles, whereas many competitors only stocked 2,000, and the orders went directly to wholesalers. Amazon quickly expanded their database to 1.5 million books and started offering deep discounts which attracted many new customers.
Starting out as solely an online bookstore, Amazon has become the largest online retailer in the world.
Deutschman, A. (2004, August). Inside The Mind Of Jeff Bezos. Fast Company, 85, 52-58. Retrieved from: http://www.fastcompany.com/50106/inside-mind-jeff-bezos
Jeff Bezo’s began Amazon in his garage in July 1995 with three Sun workstations setting on wooden doors for tables and extension cords running from everywhere (Academy of Achievement, 2010). Right from the beginning he was a visionary leaving his well paying job as a senior vice president with D. E. Shaw to begin Amazon.com (Academy of Achievement, 2010). Being the visionary that he is he saw an opportunity prompted by the huge growth rate of internet use in a single year and ran with it never looking back. Jeff realized that the internet had “no real commerce to speak of” so he began researching possible businesses (Academy of Achievement, 2010). “After reviewing 20 mail order businesses and deciding which could be conducted more efficiently over the internet than by traditional means he decided on books” (Academy of Achievement, 2010). He thought books were perfect because attempting to send huge catalogs for all the available books would be expensive and cumbersome, but an online resource database that was easy to navigate would provide customers with easy access and a single point from which to shop. “In 30 days, with no press, Amazon had sold books in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries, obviously by the success of Amazon he was right (Academy of Achievement, 2010). In a case study written by Javad Kargar called “Amazon.com in 2003” he stated that “Amazon's online store was a big hit, with about $5 million in the first year of operations” (2004). This huge success so quickly would have confirmed for Jeff that his idea was viable and drove him to continue to strive for more. Jeff Bezo’s charismatic-visionary leadership is the key to his and Amazon’s success.
He co partnered with Elon Musk to create PayPal- an online payments system. When the company went public in 2002,it was a big pay day for the team and when e-Bay eventually purchased it later in the same year for one and half billion dollars,Peter received a 3.7 % stake which was valued at almost 55 million and with that he made his grand entry into tech. Another smart move is when he made an investment of $500,000 dollars for a 10.2% stake in Facebook during its early stages and with Facebook’s current market cap we all know how that turned out for him,a genius investment decision Peter has his hands in about everything ranging from such success stories as LinkedIn, Practice Fusion, Vator, Metamed, Powerset, IronPort, Asana, Votizen, Caplinked, Big Think, Palantir Technologies, Quora, Stripe, Rypple and Legendary Entertainment. He goes for it
Launched by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com website started in 1995 and is today considered as one of the most prominent retail website on the internet with a record turnover of US$ 14.87 billion in 2007. Jeff Bezos’s intention was to create an internet based company with the most dedicated product portfolio on the internet where customers could find anything they might want. Amazon’s success is based on technology, services and products (Jens et al., 2003).
When Amazon.com first began in 1995, as strictly a book retailer, Bezos knew he had discovered an excellent company. After all, a physical bookstore cannot stock anywhere close to the number of books Amazon can offer online. Within a year, the company had a customer base of approximately 340,000 consumers and daily site visits were huge as well. But Bezos wanted to expand the company to offer music and DVDs, because he realized there was little or no barrier of entry. In the next years Amazon would emerge as a marketplace, expanding the company globally offering products from toys to kitchenware. Because of the relatively cheap prices Amazon was offering and also the growing number of online shoppers, the company was doing tremendous amounts of sales and creating profits.
Looking at Bezos’s business model from an entrepreneurial standpoint is very interesting. He decided to take a very unique approach to business and in doing so he took some big risks to get where he is today. For a company like Amazon that is constantly pushing the boundaries and moving into new territory one could do a SWAT analysis for nearly every year they have been in business and it would look drastically different. For now I want to retrospectively focus on the initial plan that Bezos laid out and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that came with it.
So if you know that you can fail and you are confident anyways you can succeed. Many of our innovations that we have came from people that didn't know they could do something, but they didn’t care and believed they could. For example, without Larry Page and Sergey Brin we wouldn’t have google. We all know that it didn’t just take a couple of hours to create google. Larry and Sergey failed several times in the process of making google; which is now a multi billion dollar business.
Collins, J., & Porras, J. I. (2002). Built to last: Successful habits of visionary companies. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.
Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico on January 12, 1964. His birth name was actually Jeffery Preston Jorgensen; it is believed that he changed it to honor his stepfather. His parents’ names were Jacklyn and Ted Jorgensen. At the age of four years old is mother remarried a man by the name of Miguel Bezos. At the time his mother was only a teenager and her previous marriage had only lasted a year. Jeff Bezos was moved to Houston Texas, where Miguel became an engineer for Exxon. Miguel even though claiming to be a Cuban immigrant was a very intelligent man, who came from a family of intelligent people. Miguel’s grandfather was the regional director of the US Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His grandfather later had an early retirement to a ranch located in Southern Texas. This ranch was the place of many memories for Jeff Bezos, since many summers of his life were spent there. As a child he attended the school River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from the 4th to 6th grade. As a child Bezos showed great intelligence, around the age of 9 years old he rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room.
Amazon has recorded a magnificent success in its business throughout the years that it has been in operation. It has attracted almost all people to use it when necessary. Amazon has built its success in business methodically and slowly. Amazon has made much success because of its ability to read market trends and diversify its operations. It started as an online book selling company. However, it changed its operations and started selling other products. Currently, many large retail shops use Amazon to host and power their websites, for instance, sears and virgin megastores. Amazon now attracts over fifty million visitors in a period of one month. Amazon has tried to make their services fit each individual user. It has based its services on the end user. It has shipping discounts, customer product reviews and a credit card with bonuses. It also has prime membership, product forums and 1-click ordering system among other services. The company has tried to make a remarkable experience for customers and visitors (Thomas, 2006).
Amazon is the world’s largest retailer online. Founded in 1994 it has started as an online bookstore but soon expends its catalog with software, video games, electronics, furniture, food, toys etc.
Jeffrey Bezos, the founder and current CEO of Amazon.com, initially started the company as an online bookstore in 1994. Within several months, Amazon spread its operation to all 50 states and abroad. Presently, customers from over 45 countries buy at Amazon. Over a short period of time, the company expanded sales to electronics, video games, software, CDs, DVDs, MP3 downloads, food, furniture, apparel, jewelry, and toys. Today, the company even produces its own products such as the Kindle series. Also, Amazon.com is one of the major providers of cloud computing services. Currently, the company is the largest global online retailer responsible for 20% of online retail market share.
Over the course of this class I have learned how important it is to be creative and innovative in the way that businesses are conducted within the organizations. The ability to innovate is the “secret sauce” of business success (Dyer, et al., 2009). However, creativity and innovation cannot take place if the leaders are not willing to foster a culture of innovation within the organization. Amabile & Khaire (2008) asserted that, it is essential to motivate people to contribute ideas by making it safe to fail. Stress that the goal is to experiment constantly, fail early and often—and learn as much as possible in the process. Convince people that they won’t be punished or humiliated if they speak up or make mistakes (Amabile & Khaire, 2008).