notes and views on crm, social media, and the human side of information technology

What will Amazon stand for in 20 years?

What does the word Amazon evoke in your mind?

Could be the river in Brazil. That’s if you are a nomad who’s been traveling the jungles of South America for the past 15 years without having met a human being (except for those pesky cannibals).

Otherwise, it’s probably books.

Or, it could be the cloud computing platform Amazon provides; that’s if you are a software developer.

These two don’t seem to be complementary services you would expect from a large web retailer. Yet, as Nicholas Carr writes, Amazon Web Services have happened almost inevitably. As Amazon’s gross margins are quite low, the company has needed to build a very efficient and open computing platform. Which, in turn, turned out to be a new revenue opportunity on its own merits.

IBM used to sell typewriters; and I still remember the old IBM clocks telling time on Czech railway stations.

Nokia used to produce bike and car tires.

They didn’t cling to their business models when an opportunity arose. Great companies don’t; they grab the opportunity by the neck, go with it, and change along the way. And so it’s quite possible Amazon will be the undisupted leader in [fill in your computing fantasy here] in 2020; books long gone.

Take a look at your incumbent of choice: old Telcos, licensed software vendors, city councils. Which one seems to get it? Does Microsoft? Does your government?

Additional reading

June 1, 2008 | Filed Under Enterpreneurship 

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