Secrets from Amazon’s Success
by Andrew on 20/09/07 at 9:02 am
1 comment
The "High Scalability" website did a summary of how Amazon grew to be the company they are. Read the full article here. Here are some extracted parts (originally found here).
Teams are small. They are assigned authority and empowered to solve a problem as a service in anyway they see fit. The ideal team size is 8-10 people because communication is easy.
Work from the customer backward. Focus on value you want to deliver for the customer. Force developers to focus on value delivered to the customer instead of building technology first and then figuring how to use it.
There’s bound to be problems with anything that produces hype before real implementation.
Use measurement and objective debate to separate the good from the bad. I’ve been to several presentations by ex-Amazoners and this is the aspect of Amazon that strikes me as uniquely different and interesting from other companies. Their deep seated ethic is to expose real customers to a choice and see which one works best and to make decisions based on those tests.
Getting rid of the influence of the HiPPO’s, the "highest paid people in the room". This is done with techniques like A/B testing and Web Analytics. If you have a question about what you should do code it up, let people use it, and see which alternative gives you the results you want.
Create a frugal culture. Amazon used doors for desks, for example.
People’s side projects, the one’s they follow because they are interested, are often ones where you get the most value and innovation. Never underestimate the power of wandering where you are most interested.
Look for three things in interviews: enthusiasm, creativity, competence. The single biggest predictor of success at Amazon.com was enthusiasm.
Hire a Bob. Someone who knows their stuff, has incredible debugging skills and system knowledge, and most importantly, has the stones to tackle the worst high pressure problems imaginable by just leaping in.
Innovation can only come from the bottom. Those closest to the problem are in the best position to solve it. Any organization that depends on innovation must embrace chaos. Loyalty and obedience are not your tools.
Embrace innovation. In front of the whole company, Jeff Bezos would give an old Nike shoe as a “Just do it” award to those who innovated.
Andrew Smith is the pedantic systems guy behind Live Alchemy, a SA e-commerce company. Andrew writes for Ideate in an attempt to make the world a more efficient place. View more articles by Andrew.
Fred
Sep 20th, 2007
In South Africa, if you presented a shoe for innovation, you’d have a Nike-shaped indent on your forehead.
The rest is pretty good stuff .
The doors for desk thing is so 2003 though – we’ve (World Wide Creative) moved on to cheap outdoor furniture, indoors.