I watched a recent interview on 60 Minutes with Jeff Bezos, of Amazon.com fame, and it was most interesting. Once again, it showed the forward thinking aspect of the Amazon.com Mindset.
No wonder traditional businesses hate them!
Why?
Because traditional businesses are stuck in antiquated mindsets, that’s why. Plain and simple! I don’t agree with everything Amazon does, but I do agree with how they’re thinking outside the box. How they’re customer-centric. How they’re delaying immediate gratification. Good Lord, if other businesses applied the same or similar mindsets, it’d be a far different (and hopefully better!) world!
Now, do I really know what’s in the heart of Mr. Bezos? Not really, all I can see is what’s presented. But, if actions speak louder than words, what we see is what we’re getting. Sure, news is slanted toward whoever’s paying the bills, but we see, everyday, how Amazon operates, and they operate in a way traditional businesses do not operate and therefore cannot understand, because traditional businesses are driven purely by and for profit and immediate gratification at the expense (pardon the pun) of the customer.
Do I want drones cluttering our airspace and depositing packages at our homes? No, I don’t. It’s just more clutter. Above our heads. They claim they want a 30-minute fulfillment ability, and these drones could very well deliver that…but not before 2015. So, would you have to be right there to collect your delivery? Is that the plan? If not, imagine this…people-of-ill-repute seeing these drones…following them to your home…and stealing your goods.
Okay, but it is cool on a Science Fiction level…but I still cringe at the thought of the air above our heads cluttered with low flying drones everywhere! Bird strikes! Small aircraft! Maybe getting fired upon by military drones from above, oh my!
Well, fact of the matter is…though not every idea at Amazon meets with success…successes at Amazon do seem to be more frequent than not. They are thinking outside the box and attempt to do what stodgy, traditional businesses seem unable to do: reimagine.
Related articles
- Jeff Bezos Debuts Amazon Prime Air Drones (guardianlv.com)
- Amazon testing delivery with drones, CEO Bezos says (dailymaverick.co.za)
That’s why I used to be a fan of Apple—they were the innovators, while Microsoft was the follower. Apple has slowed down (although they’re still light years ahead of MS), and they pander too much to the masses now for me to be a fan (plus my MacBook has died twice in the last year). I saw the Bezos interview too, and have a new respect for the guy, both for his entrepreneurial creativity and his commitment to making it—my fave comment was when he said he drove the truck when Amazon was brand new.
The other side of that coin, though, is what Amazon does to the rest of the entrepreneurial class, especially the small fry. My local bookstores can’t compete against big A’s prices, selection and delivery schedule—not even close. Eventually, anything product oriented will have to become part of the corporatization of America, which feeds the income inequality that is killing our society (a handful of rich decision-makers; everybody else gets minimum wage).
BTW: Amazon drones will make great skeet shooting targets.
Yes, Joe, there are definite pros and cons…but the constant is that they ARE thinking outside of the box. Not everything they do is perfect, and i”m not a student of economics, but I sympathize with what you said. It is sad to knock the “Moms and Pops” out of business, but, by the same token, are they merely doing what they’ve always done, or are they trying to figure out new ways to thrive? I don’t have the correct answer, but I know change is not always easy. I personally miss all the indie book stores, and miss the old tyme mom-and-pops, but there are only so many battles I can take up (I joke that I can only do 32.4 things at once, already…), and I have to trust that Life will “fall out” to the best option. I tried to boycott Walmart early on…but it became untenable. Upshot is…either you change with [hopefully good] change or you get run over.
BTW, I also noted and loved those comments about how he “drove the truck”!
But…I also squirmed and gritted my teeth with the whole “CIA using our computers” thing. Geeze….
I agree Frank. Always interesting to see the mind of Bezos at work but this idea seems full of questions and implementation issues. I enjoy technology as much as the next guy, it has made it possible for me to live and work from an area that would never have been possible in years past. I have to wonder where we are headed when instant gratification has become the norm. I myself can wait for the FedEx truck although it would be fun to watch a drone navigate a landing in the middle of the turkey population that share my land with me.
Yeaaaaah, not a fan of instant gratification, either. Look at how it’s changed how we interact with each other. How much more rude and hurried everyone is.
Sigh.
Yes I understand some of their stratagies that help them monopolize. But at the reisk of being lambasted, they are an efficient machine that can keep prices low just like Walmart. Now if Walmart, Google, Apple, YouTube were all in one big co…imagine they could take over the world.
…and I’m not a fan of monopolies, either! I wish I had readily available answer, but I’m not “into” economics. I am a fan of innovation and outside-the-box thinking, so I hope that all this will, truly, be customer friendly, since Amazon calls themselves “customtercentric.” Guess we’ll see….
Other businesses’ hatred of Amazon is what ‘killed’ their paper book imprint. Barnes & Noble, Target and Wal-Mart refused to carry any of the titles, and indie sellers would only order them under duress (ie: for a longtime customer, or to support a local author).
Even a corporation as mighty as Amazon has an Achilles’ heel, and this is it. Faster delivery cannot fully take the place of brick and mortar store support, as the collapse of their physical book imprint proves.
Amazon is not a publishing company—it’s, at its heart—a retail biz that is taking on publishing (and I never got the impression that drone were gonna make or break the company; it was just another risk they were investigating). Now, this I submit: is it really AMAZON that is failing at publishing…or those who Amazon hired, who appear to be traditional publishing ilk (e.g, Kirshbaum, et al), or maybe inexperienced individuals? That being the case, if traditionally mindsetted individuals attempt the same myopic mindset as is already in practice, then why would it succeed (they never got back to me OR my agent [after several agent requests—and my agent KNEW whom we submitted to! How RUDE is that?!] when we submitted, so I heartily submit they were operating under the same old rules, different “hat”)? The current publishing worldview is struggling because of antiquated practices, indie publishing is taking advantage of that and on the rise, and if indie publishing is on the rise…and Amazon is at or near the center of that…then is Amazon really failing? How is CreateSpace doing? They seem to be doing quite well (though I don’t read biz reports). My experience with them has (so far) been STELLAR. Their response times to my questions incredible quick and responsive. I somehow doubt the same can be said of traditional publishing, if I know Big Businesses (NOTHING moves fast).
And, again, this thing about Mom-and-Pops going down because of Amazon. As I’ve said before, I like them, but…if they’re not willing to change their business practices, then they will fail in today’s economy. It’s not just Amazon, perhaps it’s the Internet. And as evil as the Internet may or may not be, it exists and ain’t going way (short of the Fall of Skynet and The Rise of the Machines…), so businesses HAVE to change how they operate or they will die. Simple math. Whether or not the Amazon.coms of the world are evilly and outright-ly (okay, not a word…) sabotaging everyone else. Perhaps the point of view might better be made that the outside-the-box mentality is sabotaging everyone because it’s those practices that are WORKING, while other practices are floundering. Fine point of order there; the “method,” in and of itself causes organic decay of the “way things are” just by being put into practice!
This is so dang polarizing, but I feel most of said polarization is because one is looking at the effects, the end results, and not looking at the process, the driving motivators. The organic different-ness. The Barnes & Noble employees I have interacted with, while mostly pleasant, aren’t nearly as knowledgeable about BOOKS and their CONTENTS as the old indie brick-and-mortar stores were…and the feeling I get radiating off them all is that “this is just a job.” I don’t get any real excitement from them in-store. Service? Nothing to write home about—not bad nor good; just like I’d get in any other store. Granted, a generalization, and only my experience, but still, a data point. I get more enthusiastic service over *e-mail* with the Help Techs at CreateSpace. They even use exclamation points.
And there’s there hatred. Of course those getting brow-beat by a competitor are gonna hate the competitor’s guts! Again, I’m not worshiping Amazon, but they are the only one (besides my ex-agent) who have given me the time of day in publishing my work…work that my readers are finding fun to read and even make them think. That some (it’s hard for me to say this) actually GUSH about. I mean, wow, frigging WOW. Words I wrote. Not one New York publisher gave me that chance. No, Amazon’s not perfect, and they know it. Mr. Bezos even says it’s just a matter of time before the Next Big Thing topples and overthrows them. So, they’re not blind. Not stupid. And I don’t think they’re evil. They’re just—in my humble opinion, organically different in mindset.
After responding to the “collapse” of Amazon publishing above, I decided to try find just how bad it is declining…and have to admit, I’m not finding much, if anything even remotely substantial to such an assertion. In fact, I find they’re launching a new imprint for short stories called StoryFront: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-publishing-launches-storyfront-140000782.html. I thought there’d be tons of articles out there ripping Amazon a new one, if it really were happening, but am just not finding that. So, if there ARE articles out there talking about the collapse, could someone point me in that direction?
I found this link, but it’s dated for 5/5/2012: https://ilmk.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/how-is-thomas-mercer-amazons-mystery-imprint-doing/. I thought this quote in that link interesting: “I think they are making it work, and doing better than might be expected. They are being somewhat conservative at this point, and that’s working for them.”
I found this polarizing link and its comments, dated October 2013: http://www.thepassivevoice.com/10/2013/amazon-is-failing-to-establish-itself-as-a-big-player-in-book-publishing/. Doesn’t give a whole lot to go on, nor anything of meat.
And this link, also October 2013: http://www.geekwire.com/2013/report-amazon-publishing-failing-gain-traction-booksellers/. But, really, it seems rather premature to cite the end of Amazon’s publishing. It’s only a couple years old–did traditional publishing take off so quickly when it was conceived? And the only reason is that B&N—which I’ve heard is also struggling, I might add—is not accepting Amazon books? Something seems a bit fishy-if-not-self-defeating, there, in logic.
BTW, here’s the gestalt Amazon publishing link: http://www.apub.com/home.
So, if Amazon is NOT failing, then I retract what I’ve said above. Apologies. I what-iffed too much before researching my response.
Here’s another interesting link about Amazon’s publishing arm: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/04/amazon-kindle-ebook-sales-indie-publishers?CMP=twt_gu.
Notable quotes from the link?
“Amazon has rapidly built a leading position as a producer and distributor of indie works during the past few years, developing its ebook publishing service Kindle Direct Publishing, and CreateSpace, an online service for people who want to make their work available through on-demand print books, music CDs, and DVDs.”
and
“CreateSpace topped the league of self-published print book producers in the US, registering 131,460 ISBNs in 2012, an increase of 123% on the previous year, and of 3,300% compared to 2007, according to figures from US ISBN agency Bowker.”
Granted, not talking about their Thomas & Mercer, etc., imprints, and all, but it’s still a publishing arm to Amazon.s corporation.