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Thursday, May 24, 2018

Review: The Everything Store. Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of AmazonThe Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book. Well-researched, well-written, has both interesting business and technology lessons as well as interpersonal drama to spice it up. Brad Stone seems to be a skillful writer and journalist.

The book is both about Jeff Bezos and Amazon - difficult to decide which one is more prominent. What I particularly liked about the book that it leaves you with both admiration for and cautiousness againast the type of the leader as Bezos and the type of the company as Amazon. A focused, extremely smart, visionary leader - yet, as the it was said in the book "You do not work with Bezos, you work for Bezos".

A single-minded, perhaps obsessive focus on customer, delivering maximum value for customer (for minimum money) stands out as one of the reasons for tremendous success of Amazon. On the other hand, Amazon as an employer? - not the company I would like to join.

It was gratifying to read the story behind the numerous innovations which Amazon has disrupted markets with: 1-Click buying, Amazon Prime, Kindle, AWS - several of which I have been direct or indirect customer of.

The book was written in 2013. While reading it in 2018, it felt very much up-to-date. I will only wait for the vol.2 of the book to be written in 5-10-15 years from now, when the story of Amazon and Bezos will evolve further.

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