Culture of Innovation by Phillip Potloff

1. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Amazon’s Innovation Culture
Philip Potloff
Head of Enterprise Strategy, AWS

3. WHEN AMAZON MOVED FROM:
Physical
World
Digital
World
Ideas to move closer to Content
Creators:
Kindle Direct Publishing
Amazon Publishing
Amazon Studio/Golden globe Award
winning TV shows
Alexa
Ideas to move closer to the
Customer:
Kindle
MP3 music store
Prime Instant Video (PIV)
Fire TV
Echo
Strategic Focus: Get Closer to the
Ends of the value chain

4. Our Mission
to be Earth’s most
customer-centric company

5. Our Commitment
we make our customers’ lives easier

6. Where innovation begins
we start with the customer
and work backwards

7. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved. 77
Amazon’s
Growth Flywheel
> Value
> Selection
> Convenience

8. Our culture of Innovation
»Customer Obsession
“Start every process with the customer and work backwards.”
»Long Term Thinking
“Be stubborn on the vision but flexible on the details.”
»If you want to be inventive, you have to be willing to fail.
“We are willing to go down on a bunch of dark alleys and occasionally we find something that really works.”
»You have to be willing to be misunderstood for a long time.
“We are very comfortable being misunderstood.”

9. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

12. Mechanisms
Encoded behaviors that
facilitate innovative thinking
Architecture
Structure that supports
rapid growth and change
Culture
Customer obsession,
hire builders, let them build,
support them with a belief system
Amazon’s Innovation Approach
Organization
Small, empowered teams
that own what they create

13. Mechanisms

14. Working Backwards
is a process
Use it to get clarity, not to document
what you’ve already decided to do.
Customer
Press
Release
FAQ
User
Manual

15. Who is your customer?
Be specific about their context and needs

16. The 5 Questions

17. The FAQ
• Include both customer FAQs
and stakeholder FAQs
• Include the hard questions
• Share your Press Release early
to gather questions

18. Visuals
• Rough idea – rough drawing
• Match fidelity to maturity of
your idea
• Don’t be afraid to be provocative
• Create discussion

19. Artifacts from the Working Backwards process
Press Release
FAQ
Visuals

20. We read,
discuss,
debate
and ask
questions.

21. “Why Amazon Is The World’s Most Innovative Company Of 2017”
fastcompany.com

22. Architecture

23. “Invention requires two things: the
ability to try a lot of experiments, and
not having to live with the collateral
damage of failed experiments.”
Andy Jassy
CEO, Amazon Web Services

25. Microservices Principles
Single Purpose
API-based
Highly-decoupled
http://

27. The most radical and
transformative of
inventions are often
those that empower
others to unleash
their creativity –
to pursue their
dreams.

28. Self-service Platforms
without Gatekeepers
We are creating powerful self-service
platforms that allow thousands of people
to boldly experiment and accomplish
things that would otherwise be
impossible or impractical.

29. Sellers on Amazon

30. Fulfillment by Amazon

31. kindle direct publishing

32. Amazon Web Services

33. Culture
(People & Beliefs)

34. At Amazon, we
hire Builders and
let them build.

35. 1. Customer obsession
2. Ownership
3. Invent and simplify
4. Are right, a lot
5. Hire and develop the best
6. Insist on the highest standards
7. Think big
Amazon’s Leadership Principles
8. Bias for action
9. Frugality
10. Learn and be curious
11. Earn trust
12. Dive deep
13. Have backbone; disagree and commit
14. Deliver results

36. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved. 3939
Is it a one-way or
a two-way door?

37. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved. 4040
Learn from failures…

38. Organization

39. Image by Guido van Nispen in the Dutch Digital Pioneer collection
“The traditional model is that
you take your software to the
wall that separates
development and operations,
and throw it over and then
forget about it.
Not in Amazon.
You build it. You run it.”
Dr. Werner Vogels, CTO Amazon

40. Amazon Achieves Speed and Agility with Two-Pizza Teams
Small,
decentralized
teams are nimble
Own/run
what you
build

41. Jeff Bezos
CEO, Amazon.com
We've had three big ideas
at Amazon that we've
stuck with for 18 years…
put the customer first,
invent, and be patient.

42. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Thank you
Philip Potloff
Head of Enterprise Strategy, AWS
@philippotloff

43. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
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