Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon

In a talk at the 2018 Air, Space and Cyber Conference, Jeff described Amazon this way: “Our culture is four things: customer obsession instead of competitor obsession; willingness to think long term, with a longer investment horizon than most of our peers; eagerness to invent, which of course goes hand in hand with failure; and then, finally, takin

The larger and more ambitious it got, the more complicated it became structurally and the harder it was to keep everyone coordinated and moving quickly. Bezos wanted to execute several strategies simultaneously, but the company’s various interdependent divisions were wasting too much time coordinating with one other.

Any project at Amazon is designed via a “working backwards” process. That is, the company, famous for its focus on the customer, starts with a press release that describes what the finished product does and why. (If it’s an internal-only service or product, the “customer” might be another internal team.) Then they write a “Frequently Asked Question

First, customer-focused ideas come from all areas within Amazon. Many companies have the “business people” tell the “technical people” what to build. There’s little discussion back and forth, and the teams stay in their own lanes. Amazon is not like this at all. It’s everyone’s job to obsess over customers and think of inventive ways to delight the