JEFF BEZOS: HOW FRUGALITY DRIVES AMAZON’S INNOVATION
In the latest issue of Business Week, there’s some great insight from Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, on innovating in tough times.
Bezos says, “…There’s no bad time to innovate….You should be doing it around things that your customers care about.”
“I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. When we first trying to acquire customers, we didn’t have money to spend on ad budgets. So we created the associates program, [which lets] any Web site link to us, and we give them a revenue share.”
“I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate. That’s actually a serious point. If you’re going to do something that’s never been done before — which is basically what innovation is — people are going to misunderstand it just because it’s new.
