Guest Lecture Amazon

Question 1

Amazon’s mission

Answer 1

to be Earth’s most customer-centric company

Question 2

Starting point of innovation

Answer 2

start with the customer and work backwards

Question 3

Growth Flywheel

Answer 3

It starts with building things from the customer experience (CE) so that the customer wants to buy from Amazon, which in turn drives traffic, which in turns attracts more partners (sellers), which influences the selection

• Price
• Selection
• Convenience

Question 4

How do we organize for Innovation?

Answer 4

1. Culture
2. Mechanisms
3. Architecture
4. Organization

Question 5

How do we organize for Innovation? | Culture

Answer 5

1. Culture -> our Leadership Principles
2. Invent and Simplify
3. Willingness to be misunderstood for a long time (Kindle)
4. Bias for Action

Question 6

How do we organize for Innovation? | Mechanisms

Answer 6

1. A mechanism is a complete process

2. Working backwards: A Mechanism for Innovation

Question 7

How do we organize for Innovation? | Architecture

Answer 7

1. A shift to microservices
2. Self-service without gatekeepers
3. Accelerate the pace of innovation

Question 8

How do we organize for Innovation? | Organization

Answer 8

1. Amazon hires builders and lets them build
2. Two-pizza teams are fast and agile, fostering ownership and autonomy
3. Learn from failures

Question 9

Two-pizza teams principle

Answer 9

A way to measure the number of people, if a team is larger than what you can feed with two pizza’s the team is already too big > teams need to be small, need to know each other