Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Explains Why We Love Some Companies And Fear Others

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Explains Why We Love Some Companies And Fear Others

MAX NISEN OCT. 24, 2013, 3:33 PM 1,953 1

Amazon has grown rapidly from e-commerce pioneer and bookseller to a behemoth that sells just about anything you can think of. And considering Amazon Web Services, which helps run everything from Netflix to DropBox, there are more services than most people would imagine. According to Brad Stone’s new book “The Everything Store,”  that omnipresence made its CEO Jeff Bezos wonder how Amazon could avoid becoming one of those companies that people hate for its size and power. The company had already been criticized for how it pays sales tax, eBook pricing, certain acquisitions, and ill-thought out marketing efforts, like an aggressive price comparison app. He wanted to know how the company could be “loved, not feared.” Bezos wrote a memo called “Amazon.love,” which Stone was able to obtain, that he distributed to his “S-team” of top executives. In it, he highlighted the fact that some multibillion-dollar companies have managed to remain beloved, or at least thought of as “cool” by customers. Think Apple, Whole Foods, Costco, Nike, and Google. Others get piled on, rather than defended, if things go badly. Think Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, and Wal-Mart. Both sets of companies do very well. But the core of Amazon’s ethos and culture is that the customer always comes first. Because the customer loses trust if they fear that you’re out to take advantage of them, Amazon’s sheer size makes that a worry. Bezos laid out the core differences between the two types of businesses in the memo. It’s a playbook for any business that aspires to be loved, instead of feared. Via “The Everything Store”:

• Rudeness is not cool.
• Defeating tiny guys is not cool.
• Close-following is not cool.
• Young is cool.
• Risk taking is cool.
• Winning is cool.
• Polite is cool.
• Defeating bigger, unsympathetic guys is cool.
• Inventing is cool.
• Explorers are cool.
• Conquerors are not cool.
• Obsessing over competitors is not cool.
• Empowering others is cool.
• Capturing all the value only for the company is not cool.
• Leadership is cool.
• Conviction is cool.
• Straightforwardness is cool.
• Pandering to the crowd is not cool.
• Hypocrisy is not cool.
• Authenticity is cool.
• Thinking big is cool.
• The unexpected is cool.
• Missionaries are cool.
• Mercenaries are not cool.

After ranking companies on those attributes, Bezos concluded that customer focus alone isn’t enough. Being inventive isn’t enough, either. Beloved companies manage to make what he describes as “that pioneering spirit” perceived and felt by their customers. When customers believe the company has a vision of the future that they want to be a part of and trust it can deliver on that vision, then they are more likely to support it.

Marina Mahathir: The cost of telling the truth; It takes courage to stand one’s ground, but the greatest reward is the ability to sleep at night, knowing that one’s conscience is clear

Updated: Thursday October 24, 2013 MYT 9:07:53 AM

The cost of telling the truth

BY MARINA MAHATHIR

It takes courage to stand one’s ground, but the greatest reward is the ability to sleep at night, knowing that one’s conscience is clear.

WHEN parents try to teach their young children certain values and behaviours, consistency is the key. When you tell children that lying is wrong, then they must never catch you telling untruths. If you say there’s no money to buy some fancy new toy, then you can’t come home with a brand new car without them wondering how come you can afford that. Children have natural radar for hypocrisy. It is tuned to catch any inconsistencies, white lies or complete untruths that parents spout because these grate against the natural sense of fairness that kids have. And every time they catch their parents out, a small bit of parental authority erodes. This anti-hypocrisy radar is only maintained if the child doesn’t then learn that to be hypocritical is more rewarding than to be true to one’s own conscience. If they find that there is nothing to be gained from telling the truth, and everything to gain from fudging facts, then the children grow up with their moral compass askew. They learn not to take responsibility for their own misdeeds but to blame others for it. Thus you get stories, for example, about kids who blame their maids for not putting their homework in their schoolbags on the day they are meant to pass them up. Unfortunately there are more and more adults behaving in this way these days. Read more of this post

Getting Ph.D.s to Think Like Entrepreneurs; Hundreds of scientists have participated in business boot camps sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Getting Ph.D.s to Think Like Entrepreneurs

By Nick Leiber October 24, 2013

In a crowded hotel conference room in downtown Brooklyn, N.Y., in October, Jerry Engel told dozens of earnest young scientists and engineers to cut the “scientific crap” and instead identify would-be customers who might care about their products. Frank Rimalovski piled on, urging attendees presenting research that they wanted to turn into businesses—from bone grafts to facial-recognition software—“to focus on the problem, not the solution.” Read more of this post

“It’s 1776 in Indonesia”: From Washington, Some Lessons for Jokowi; many Indonesians hope that Joko can do for Indonesia what Obama is perceived to have done for America. Obama finds himself frustrated by members of his own party weary of his leadership and increasingly willing to defy him”

From Washington, Some Lessons for Jokowi

By Stanley Weiss on 1:45 pm October 24, 2013.
In 1949, a young press attache was dispatched from Jakarta to New York, with the difficult task of convincing the American public to support young Indonesians in their fight against Dutch forces that had ruled Indonesia for more than a century. Realizing that Indonesia, like America before it, was seeking to create a sovereign nation by breaking the colonial ties that bound it to a single European power, he produced an eloquent paper that harkened back to the year America declared independence from Great Britain. Its provocative title? “It’s 1776 in Indonesia.” Read more of this post

Economy-class activist investor crashes the corporate party

Economy-class activist investor crashes the corporate party

ROSS KERBER, REUTERS OCT. 24, 2013, 6:12 AM 10,248 9

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Shareholder activists come in different flavors. One is the deep-pocketed investor, such as Carl Icahn or Dan Loeb, who takes big stakes in companies and forces management to change strategy. Another type is the persistent provocateur who buys a handful of shares and agitates on a shoestring. That’s John Chevedden. Now 67 years old, Chevedden launched his career as an activist – he rejects the term “gadfly” – after being laid off from the aerospace industry in the early 1990s. Since then, he has unleashed a relentless flow of shareholder proxy measures at some of the largest U.S. companies.

Read more of this post

Why Can People Live In Hiroshima And Nagasaki Now, But Not Chernobyl?

Why Can People Live In Hiroshima And Nagasaki Now, But Not Chernobyl?

MELISSA, TODAY I FOUND OUT OCT. 24, 2013, 9:50 AM 8,925 16

On August 6 and 9, 1945, U.S. airmen dropped the nuclear bombs Little Boy and Fat Man on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On April 26, 1986, the number four reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine exploded. Today, over 1.6 million people live and seem to be thriving in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet the Chernobyl exclusion zone, a 30 square kilometer area surrounding the plant, remains relatively uninhabited. Here’s why. Read more of this post

The making of Amsterdam: How the Dutch capital gave birth to the Enlightenment

The making of Amsterdam: How the Dutch capital gave birth to the Enlightenment

Oct 26th 2013 |From the print edition

Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City. By Russell Shorto.Doubleday; 368 pages; $28.95. Little, Brown; £25. Buy from Amazon.com,Amazon.co.uk

DURING its rise in the 17th century, Amsterdam was an important haven for religious dissidents. It was also the publishing centre for the racy philosophical tracts that were too hot to be printed in France or England. The city’s economic fortunes were born of its embrace of international trade and of financial innovation. And the highly profitable Dutch East India Company was the world’s first joint-stock company, leading in time to the world’s first stock and options markets. Read more of this post

Overcrowding, broken furniture and bed bugs: Foreign students complain about S’pore hostels

Overcrowding, broken furniture and bed bugs: Foreign students complain about S’pore hostels

Stomp
Thursday, Oct 24, 2013

A recent news report by a Taiwan media company highlighted the poor living conditions of foreign students who come to Singapore seeking work, and how this greatly differed from what they had been promised. In the video published by China Times which Stomp readers Derome and Steric alerted Stomp to, an 18-year-old Taiwanese student shares his experience about how he had come to Singapore to work and study English at the same time. Despite paying $280 for a room every month, he has to share the space with six to eight others. The tenants also have to take turns and wait to use a small bathroom. Read more of this post

This ‘Reverse Microwave’ Chills Beer In 45 Seconds

This ‘Reverse Microwave’ Chills Beer In 45 Seconds

CAMERON CIMCIK, FOODBEAST
OCT. 24, 2013, 10:49 AM 5,699 6

Microwaves are handy little units when we want to heat food or drinks up quickly. However, never before has there been a gadget that does just the opposite — cooling without the long wait. That is, until now. A product of Enviro-Cool Limited, V-Tex is an environmentally-friendly, efficient system that cools beverages in a matter of seconds. From wine bottles to soda cans, the unit is able to chill drinks in all types of containers without disturbing carbonation. How? V-Tex uses a “start stop rotational sequence” to create a Rankine vortex, which essentially keeps a drink in its original state while quickly bringing down the temperature. The reverse microwave requires nearly 80% less energy than many standard drink chillers, allowing consumers to save money and keep things green. It also frees up standard refrigerator space, since most beverages can be stored at room temperature elsewhere until right before serving. Enviro-Cool plans to release both commercial and domestic versions of V-Tex, but until then, we’ll have to settle for poppin’ bottles in the fridge. See how it works below: