Amazon’s Strategy by CEO Bezos, #2

from USA Today 25 Sept 13 enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4biz 5/14

3. Amazon’s 3 part Strategy starts with:
1) Amazon selling Premium products at less than premium prices”.
2) make Money when people use the devices, not necessarily when they buy them, since Amazon sells the products at roughly break-even prices.
3) an innovative feature like Mayday comes in, at the intersection between what Bezos refers to as “customer delight” and deep integration with Amazon’s entire business, including the hardware, operating system, key apps, the Cloud & Amazon Web services.
Bezos belts out an infectious laugh shortly before demonstrating Mayday, as he poses the question he says is on all of our minds on occasion: “Am I in control of my devices, or are my devices in control of me?”

4. Amazon Studios (which produces original TV content) “We think Amazon Publishing & Amazon Studios are just good businesses in their own right. With Amazon Studios, we like to do something that has a twist to it. We’re changing the production process. So for example we took all of our pilots and put them out ahead of time and let the entire community review those pilots. They were heavily watched & heavily reviewed, then we picked our personal favorites. If we had done that as studio executives, what would we have chosen? That process changed our minds on what to go forward with. That’s the kind of twist. They’re going to work their way into a whole new process for green-lighting TV and movies.”

5. Amazon Publishing. “They’re seeing opportunities to invent with the author as the customer. Recently, Amazon Publishing started to pay authors monthly instead of twice a year. One of the things authors will tell you is, they like better data on sales and (would like to be) paid more frequently.”

• Being on the Mount Rushmore of tech? Your legacy? “I think about the things we do as big team efforts … Team Invention. I’m flattered. But I don’t spend any time thinking about it that way. I very much think about the future, and I don’t spend any time thinking about the past. I’m having fun, and I love my job. I love the fact that we here as a Team at Amazon have so many people counting on us (ie, customers, shareholders), that we count on each other. It’s very motivating to wake up in the morning and know that there are a bunch of people counting on you and that they want you to invent pieces of the future — “Show me something new.”

• On being a Pitchman? “My very favorite thing is to sit with a product design team and talk about what we’re going to do next. Being the Pitchman, (to use your phrase), is an essential part of my job, but I wouldn’t want to spend most of my time doing that. I’m glad it’s a spice in my job and not the main ingredient. ”

• On what’s next — an Amazon phone, video game console…? “Roadmap questions I just can’t talk about. But it was worth you trying.” He laughs.

Comments: Is there anything that you can add to this?