Sandy Carter discusses the importance of customer obsession, curiosity, and culture for driving innovation. She emphasizes starting with the customer by understanding their problem and desired outcomes. An innovative culture fosters learning from failures, encourages curiosity through questions, and values diversity to spur new ideas. The key is focusing on the customer's experience and needs above all else to develop truly innovative and differentiated solutions.

1. Differentiation through Innovation

2. Differentiation
through Innovation
Sandy Carter
Vice President
Amazon Web Services
@Sandy_Carter

3. Innovation = Empathy
Customer Obsession
Culture
Curiosity

4. Doesn’t everyone do this?
•Customer focused
•Customer driven
•Customer obsessed

7. WORK BACKWARDS
from the customer
#1

8. WRITE THE
PRESS RELEASE
#2

9. WRITE THE
FAQ
#3

10. …TO ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS
• Who is the customer?
• What is the customer problem or opportunity?
• What is the most important customer benefit?
• How do you know what customers need?
• What does the customer experience look like?

11. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved. Amazon Confidential
§ Culture is the “software of the mind.”
§ The culture reflects the lessons learned that are
important enough to pass on to the next generation
Culture Is “the Way We Do Things Around Here.”
Failure is not an option --------à Learning (start small, experiment, and iterate)

12. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved. Amazon Confidential
© 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Just Eat’s Culture of Innovation
• Hackathons
• Venture – Pitch competitions
• Co-creation
• Failure Learning Throwdowns
• Sharing: tech.just-eat.com
• College Ambassadors
AI & Alexa

13. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved. Amazon Confidential
Own/run
what you
build
Fosters ownership & autonomy
Two Pizza Teams

14. Curiousity
• Innovators ask a myriad of questions.
They don’t lose their natural curiosity.
• Preschool children ask nearly a
hundred questions a day. As we grow
older, though, most of us ask only 10
questions a day!
Source: Creator’s Code

15. Diversity Drives Innovation
and Business Outcomes

17. DON’T OVERANALYZE IT
JUST GET GOING.
@Sandy_Carter