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When You Receive Criticism From Well-meaning People, It Pays To Ask, ‘are They Right?’ And If They Are, You Need To Adapt What They’re Doing. If They’re Not Right, If You Really Have Conviction That They’re Not Right, You Need To Have That Long-term Willingness To Be Misunderstood. It’s A Key Part Of Invention.

-Jeff Bezos

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When You Receive Criticism

Jeff Bezos

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When You Receive Criticism From Well-meaning People, It Pays To Ask, ‘are They Right?’ And If They Are, You Need To Adapt What They’re Doing. If They’re Not Right, If You Really Have Conviction That They’re Not Right, You Need To Have That Long-term Willingness To Be Misunderstood. It’s A Key Part Of Invention.

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I'm Not Prepared To Make Any Multi-decade Commitments.

We Watch Our Competitors, Learn From Them, See The Things That They Were Doing For Customers And Copy Those Things As Much As We Can.

The Great Thing About Fact-based Decisions Is That They Overrule The Hierarchy.

The World Is Littered With Corpses That Predicted Technology In A Particular Arena Was Done. If There's Another Gigantic Step Change Out There, We Don't Yet Know What It Is.

There Is No Map, And Charting A Path Ahead Will Not Be Easy. We Will Need To Invent, Which Means We Will Need To Experiment.

I’d Rather Interview 50 People And Not Hire Anyone Than Hire The Wrong Person.

Maintain A Firm Grasp Of The Obvious At All Times.

If You Can't Feed A Team With Two Pizzas, It's Too Large.

What Characteristics Do I Look For When Hiring Somebody? That's One Of The Questions I Ask When Interviewing. I Want To Know What Kind Of People They Would Hire.

Things Never Go Smoothly.

The Thing About Inventing Is You Have To Be Both Stubborn And Flexible. The Hard Part Is Figuring Out When To Be Which.

I Have A Strongly Held Belief That One Of The Reasons That Amazon Has Been Successful Is Because We Do Not Obsess Over Competitors. Instead We Obsess Over Customers.

Our Garage Was Basically Science Fair Central.

The Internet Is Disrupting Every Media Industry...people Can Complain About That, But Complaining Is Not A Strategy. And Amazon Is Not Happening To Book Selling, The Future Is Happening To Book Selling.

Cultures, For Better Or Worse, Are Very Stable.

I’m A Big Fan Of All-you-can-eat Plans, Because They’re Simpler For Customers.

I'm Going To Go Do This Crazy Thing. I'm Going To Start This Company Selling Books Online.

Invention Requires A Long-term Willingness To Be Misunderstood.

What Consumerism Really Is, At Its Worst Is Getting People To Buy Things That Don't Actually Improve Their Lives.

All Businesses Need To Be Young Forever. If Your Customer Base Ages With You, You're Woolworth's.

If You Build A Great Product Or Service, People Will Talk About It. But It Starts With Having Something That's Worth Talking About.

Above All Else, Align With Customers. Win When They Win. Win Only When They Win.

You Don't Want To Negotiate The Price Of Simple Things You Buy Every Day.

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Your Brand Is Formed Primarily, Not By What Your Company Says About Itself, But What The Company Does.

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We Like To Pioneer, We Like To Explore, We Like To Go Down Dark Alleys And See What's On The Other Side.

We're Not Competitor Obsessed, We're Customer Obsessed. We Start With The Customer And We Work Backwards.

Not The Outcome Any Of Us Wanted.

If You're Truly Obsessed Over Customers, It'll Cover A Lot Of Errors.

Servant Leadership

To Get Something New Done You Have To Be Stubborn And Focused, To The Point That Others Might Find Unreasonable.

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If You Decide That You're Going To Do Only The Things You Know Are Going To Work, You're Going To Leave A Lot Of Opportunity On The Table.

I Wanted To Project Myself Forward To Age 80 And Say, ‘ok, I’m Looking Back On My Life. I Want To Minimise The Number Of Regrets I Have.’ And I Knew That When I Was 80, I Was Not Going To Regret Having Tried This. I Was Not Going To Regret Trying To Participate In This Thing Called The Internet That I Thought Was Going To Be A Really Big Deal. I Knew That If I Failed, I Wouldn’t Regret That. But I Knew The One Thing I Might Regret Is Not Ever Having Tried. I Knew That That Would Haunt Me Every Day.

In Seattle You Haven't Had Enough Coffee Until You Can Thread A Sewing Machine While It's Running.

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What's Dangerous Is Not To Evolve.

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I Don't Buy Stocks, I Make Stocks.

Focusing On The Customer Makes A Company More Resilient.

Web 1.0 Was Making The Internet For People, Web 2.0 Is Making The Internet Better For Companies.

You Have To Use Your Judgment. In Cases Like That, We Say, 'let's Be Simple Minded. We Know This Is A Feature That's Good For Customers. Let's Do It.

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People Who Are Right Most Of The Time Are People Who Change Their Minds Often

The Net Is Pretty Cool, But The Physical World Is The Best Medium Ever.

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If You're Competitor-focused, You Have To Wait Until There Is A Competitor Doing Something. Being Customer-focused Allows You To Be More Pioneering.

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Determine What Your Customers Need, And Work Backwards.

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Entrepreneurs Must Be Willing To Be Misunderstood For Long Periods Of Time.

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Love Of My Life

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One Of The Things That Gets Me Up In The Morning Is Knowing That Customer Expectations Are Always Rising, And I Find That Very Exciting.

Obsess About Customers, Not Competitors.

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Ebooks Had To Happen.

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If You Double The Number Of Experiments You Do Per Year You're Going To Double Your Inventiveness.

My Grandfather Taught Me That It Is Harder To Be Kind Than It Is To Be Clever.

We Are Our Choices. Build Yourself A Great Story.

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If You Have A Business Model That Relies On Customers Being Misinformed, You Better Start Working On Changing Your Business Model.

I Don't Want To Use My Creative Energy On Somebody Else's User Interface.

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I Definitely Believe People Should Pay For Copyrighted Works. And The Laws Are Sufficient: They Already Require You To Pay For Copyright Work. There's No Confusion. The Problem Is...it's A Heck Of A Lot Easier To Steal Mp3s Than To Buy Them.

I Went To Princeton Specifically To Study Physics.

Strip Malls Are History.

But There's So Much Kludge, So Much Terrible Stuff, We Are At The 1908 Hurley Washing Machine Stage With The Internet. That's Where We Are. We Don't Get Our Hair Caught In It, But That's The Level Of Primitiveness Of Where We Are. We're In 1908.

If You Are Going To Do Large-scale Invention, You Have To Be Willing To Do Three Things: You Must Be Willing To Fail; You Have To Be Willing To Think Long Term; And You Have To Be Willing To Be Misunderstood For Long Periods Of Time.

For Many People, Extended Reading Sessions On An Lcd Display Cause Eyestrain.

I Don't Think That You Can Invent On Behalf Of Customers Unless You're Willing To Think Long-term, Because A Lot Of Invention Doesn't Work. If You're Going To Invent, It Means You're Going To Experiment, And If You're Going To Experiment, You're Going To Fail, And If You're Going To Fail, You Have To Think Long Term.

If Everything You Do Needs To Work On A Three-year Time Horizon, Then You’re Competing Against A Lot Of People, But If You’re Willing To Invest On A Seven-year Time Horizon, You’re Now Competing Against A Fraction Of Those People, Because Very Few Companies Are Willing To Do That. Just By Lengthening The Time Horizon, You Can Engage In Endeavours That You Could Never Otherwise Pursue. At Amazon We Like Things To Work In Five To Seven Years. We’re Willing To Plant Seeds, Let Them Grow—and We’re Very Stubborn. We Say We’re Stubborn On Vision And Flexible On Details.

We've Done Price Elasticity Studies, And The Answer Is Always That We Should Raise Prices. We Don't Do That, Because We Believe -- And We Have To Take This As An Article Of Faith -- That By Keeping Our Prices Very, Very Low, We Earn Trust With Customers Over Time, And That That Actually Does Maximize Free Cash Flow Over The Long Term.

We Expect All Our Businesses To Have A Positive Impact On Our Top And Bottom Lines ... Profitability Is Very Important To Us Or We Wouldn't Be In This Business.

Our Alliance With Toysrus.com Has Proven To Be A Great Win For Customers, And We've Looked Forward To Taking The Next Step By Introducing The New Babiesrus.com Teamed With Amazon.com Store Since We Forged The Alliance Last August.

We Are Stubborn On Vision. We Are Flexible On Details.

I'm Skeptical That The Novel Will Be 're-invented.'

Cleverness Is A Gift, Kindness Is A Choice. Gifts Are Easy-they're Given After All. Choices Can Be Hard.

There Are A Whole Bunch Of People Who Don't Like To Shop. But There Are Also People, Maybe, Who Even Do Like To Shop But Are Very Time Pressured. And So Shopping Online Can Save People Time.

My Own View Is That Every Company Requires A Long-term View.

We Change Our Tools And Then Our Tools Change Us.

You Don't Chose Your Passion, Your Passion Choses You

You're Not Going To Make Hemingway Better By Adding Animations.

I Try To Spend My Time On Areas That I Think Are Important For The Future, And Where I Think I Can Add Value.

Any Business Plan Won't Survive Its First Encounter With Reality. The Reality Will Always Be Different. It Will Never Be The Plan.

Do Something You're Very Passionate About, And Don't Try To Chase What Is Kind Of The "hot Passion" Of The Day.

Be Proud Of Your Choices, Not Your Gifts.

One Of The Things That I Hope Will Distinguish Amazon.com Is That We Continue To Be A Company That Defies Easy Analogy. This Requires A Lot Of Innovation, And Innovation Requires A Lot Of Random Walk.

What We Need To Do Is Always Lean Into The Future; When The World Changes Around You And When It Changes Against You - What Used To Be A Tail Wind Is Now A Head Wind - You Have To Lean Into That And Figure Out What To Do Because Complaining Isn't A Strategy.

I Strongly Believe That Missionaries Make Better Products. They Care More. For A Missionary, It's Not Just About The Business. There Has To Be A Business, And The Business Has To Make Sense, But That's Not Why You Do It. You Do It Because You Have Something Meaningful That Motivates You.

Amazon.com Strives To Be The E-commerce Destination Where Consumers Can Find And Discover Anything They Want To Buy Online.

Every New Thing Creates Two New Questions And Two New Opportunities.

I Think Frugality Drives Innovation, Just Like Other Constraints Do. One Of The Only Ways To Get Out Of A Tight Box Is To Invent Your Way Out.

I Think There Are Going To Be A Bunch Of Tablet-like Devices. It's Really A Different Product Category.

Am I Going To Regret Leaving Wall Street? No. Will I Regret Missing The Beginning Of The Internet? Yes.

People Who Were Right A Lot Of The Time Were People Who Often Changed Their Minds.

There Are Multiple Ways To Be Externally Focused That Are Very Successful. You Can Be Customer-focused Or Competitor-focused. Some People Are Internally Focused, And If They Reach Critical Mass, They Can Tip The Whole Company.

Your Brand Is What People Say About You When You're Not In The Room

If We Can Keep Our Competitors Focused On Us While We Stay Focused On The Customer, Ultimately We'll Turn Out All Right.

Customer Satisfaction

I Never Worked On The School Newspaper.

It's Perfectly Healthy-encouraged, Even- To Have An Idea Tomorrow That Contradicted Your Idea Today

There'll Always Be Serendipity Involved In Discovery.

In The Old World, You Devoted 30% Of Your Time To Building A Great Service And 70% Of Your Time To Shouting About It. In The New World, That Inverts

Seek Instant Gratification - Or The Elusive Promise Of It - And Chances Are You'll Find A Crowd There Ahead Of You.

Are You Lazy Or Just Incompetent?

If You Think About The Long Term Then You Can Really Make Good Life Decisions That You Won’t Regret Later.

You Want To Look At What Other Companies Are Doing. It's Very Important Not To Be Hermetically Sealed. But You Don't Want To Look At It As If, 'ok, We're Going To Copy That.' You Want To Look At It And Say, 'that's Very Interesting. What Can We Be Inspired To Do As A Result Of That?' And Then Put Your Own Unique Twist On It.

The Book Is Not Really The Container For The Book. The Book Itself Is The Narrative. It's The Thing That People Create.

Market Leadership Can Translate Directly To Higher Revenue, Higher Profitability, Greater Capital Velocity And Correspondingly Stronger Returns On Invested Capital.

The Human Brain Is An Incredible Pattern-matching Machine.

Our Point Of View Is We Will Sell More If We Help People Make Purchasing Decisions.

For People Who Are Readers, Reading Is Important To Them.

The People Who Are Right A Lot Often Change Their Minds.

You Don't Choose Your Passions; Your Passions Choose You.

Young Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship

It's Not An Experiment If You Know It's Going To Work.

Effective Process Is Not Bureaucracy. Bureaucracy Is Senseless Process.

I Knew That If I Failed I Wouldn't Regret That, But I Knew The One Thing I Might Regret Is Not Trying.

I Think If People Read More, That Is A Better World.

We Innovate By Starting With The Customer And Working Backwards. That Becomes The Touchstone For How We Invent.

We've Had Three Big Ideas At Amazon That We've Stuck With For 18 Years, And Thy're The Reason We're Successful: Put The Customer First. Invent. And Be Patient.

There Are Two Ways To Extend A Business. Take Inventory Of What You're Good At And Extend Out From Your Skills. Or Determine What Your Customers Need And Work Backward, Even If It Requires Learning New Skills. Kindle Is An Example Of Working Backward.

E-mail Has Some Magical Ability To Turn Off The Politeness Gene In A Human Being.

We Were Hoping To Build A Small Profitable Company; And Of Course, What We've Done Is Build A Large, Unprofitable Company.

Life's Too Short To Hang Out With People Who Aren't Resourceful.

A Lot Of People – And I’m Just Not One Of Them – Believe That You Should Live For The Now. I Think What You Do Is Think About The Great Expanse Of Time Ahead Of You And Try To Make Sure That You’re Planning For That In A Way That’s Going To Leave You Ultimately Satisfied. This Is The Way It Works For Me.

I Think That, Ah, I'm A Very Goofy Sort Of Person In Many Ways.

It's Harder To Be Kind Than Clever

The One Thing That Offends Me The Most Is When I Walk By A Bank And See Ads Trying To Convince People To Take Out Second Mortgages On Their Home So They Can Go On Vacation. That's Approaching Evil.

Our Premise Is There Are Going To Be A Lot Of Winners. It's Not Winner Take All. Other People Do Not Have To Lose For Us To Win.

Go To Bed Early And Wake Up Early. The Morning Hours Are Good.

People Don't Want Gadgets, They Want Services.

Our Biggest Cost Is Not Power, Or Servers, Or People. It's Lack Of Utilization. It Dominates All Other Costs.

Good Ideas Will Always Get Funded, So That's Not Going To Be A Problem. But You Will See That It Will Be Harder And Harder For Bad Ideas To Get Funded.

Failure Comes Part And Parcel With Invention. It’s Not Optional.

We're Working To Lower The Cost Of Spaceflight So That Many People Can Afford To Go And So That We Humans Can Better Continue Exploring The Solar System. Accomplishing This Mission Will Take Time, And We're Working On It Methodically.

You Know, If You Make A Customer Unhappy They Won't Tell Five Friends, They'll Tell 5,000 Friends. So, We Are At A Point Now Where We Have All Of The Things We Need To Build An Important And Lasting Company, And If We Don't, It Will Be Shame On Us.

Everything You Are Comes From Your Choices.

We Also Have No Incentive Compensation Of Any Kind. And The Reason We Don’t Is Because It Is Detrimental To Teamwork.

Cleverness Is A Gift, Kindness Is A Choice.

It Is Very Difficult To Get People To Focus On The Most Important Things When You're In Boom Times.

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