One way to identify your invisible asymptotes is to simply ask your customers. As I noted at the start of this piece, at Amazon we honed in on how shipping fees were a brake on our business by simply asking customers and non-customers.
Here's where the oft-cited quote from Henry Ford is brought up as an... See more
Ben Franklin's daily schedule is proof that most people attribute to genius what is just long periods of focused time
My note to self from reading the book: “THINGS LOOK GOOD AT THE END OF THE JOURNEY, NOT DURING.” Tesla and SpaceX were not built. They were willed into existence, against all odds.
SpaceX failed to launch many times, and was ridiculed by many people. After their third (or fourth) failed launch, Elon sends an email to his team: “ SpaceX is in this... See more
I have a suspicion that most adults (75%+) could pick any skill—excluding sports—and work their way into the top 10% in the world simply by working exclusively on it every day for two years.
But almost nobody displays that degree of focus, so we will never know.
And, as Jeff's annual letter to shareholders has emphasized from the very first instance, Amazon's mission is to be the world's most customer-centric company. One way to continue to find vectors for growth is to stay attached at the hip to the fickle nature of customer unhappiness, which they're always quite happy to share under the right... See more