Why Amazon Is Most Innovative Company? Our Answer May Surprise You

Innovative vision. We are always fascinated by this skill. It is one of the best business skills to have in our view. Does it mean you see everything? Certainly not. It does mean you have the ability to see what many cannot. And then act on these items. That why Amazon is the most innovative company, in our minds.
Amazon Is Most Innovative
Most innovative company.
Lots of experiments and exploring. Innovation doesn’t work well without experimentation and lots of action. And Amazon is the best of the best, in our opinion.
Good executives are often the smartest guys in the room. Through years of experience solving tough problems, they learn to be masters of their craft and are able to mentor those around them. A great operational manager is a great coach, guiding others around them to achieve more than they thought they could.
Unfortunately, innovation isn’t about what you know, but what you don’t.. It requires you to explore, push boundaries and venture into uncharted areas in which there often are no true experts. You’re basically flying blind, which can be incredibly uncomfortable, especially to those who have had a strong track record of success in a structured environment.
For years, I’ve been fascinated by Jeff Bezos’ innovative vision and Amazon’s action and ability to execute.
We have written a lot about him and Amazon. (See our article on why the Wal-Mart e-commerce strategy won’t beat Amazon.) They are the most innovative company around in our humble opinion.
If you invent frequently and are willing to fail, then you never get to that point where you need to bet the whole company.
  • Jeff Bezos
Amazon is an e-commerce company in everything they do. They have developed all their expertise in full support of e-commerce. In fact, they now do e-commerce for many other businesses.
Amazon has existed in the e-commerce technology world since its inception. They think like a technology company and agile innovators, only innovative in everything they do, not just technology.
They are not afraid to try new things, and they can get things done quickly, thanks to the culture their CEO Bezos has instilled.
Probably the most persistent — and damaging — myth about innovation is that it’s about ideas. It’s not. Tremendous amounts of time and energy are wasted thinking up radically new ideas that never end up going anywhere. Middle managers never seem to tire of complaining that their ideas are ignored by the powers above.
The truth is that nobody cares about your ideas. They care about what problems you can solve for them. So if you want to innovate effectively, don’t go looking for a great idea so that you can dazzle others with your brilliance, look for a meaningful problem and get to work on solving it.
Let’s examine some of Amazon’s more creative innovations. And remember that innovation isn’t just about technology.

Amazon is most innovative … logistics and delivery

Amazon lockers
Let’s examine a recent e-commerce delivery innovation example that Amazon tried out, the introduction of Amazon lockers.
The concept is pretty simple. Amazon offers customers in select locations the option of having their package delivered to an Amazon Locker instead of to their street address.
When the package arrives, customers receive an email letting them know where to pick it up along with the code to unlock it.
Because most of the lockers are being placed in locations like convenience stores, often the customer can pick up their package 24 hours a day.
This is a great advantage for one segment of their customer base … the one that has trouble receiving their packages, either because they live in an apartment or condo that is difficult to deliver to, aren’t home to sign, or because they are worried that their package might be stolen.
But the motive for the experiment is not one based just on customer service alone, as companies like Amazon pay up to 20% more to have packages delivered to a residence.
So, delivering a package to a locker helps Amazon save money too … helping to offset the costs of installing and maintaining the lockers.
world's most innovative companies 2016
World’s most innovative companies in 2016.
Fresh grocery delivery
After trialing the service for five years in Seattle (no one accuses Amazon of a lack of patience), they expanded Amazon Fresh to Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Prime Fresh members pay $299 a year and receive same-day and early morning delivery not only on fresh grocery items but also on over 500,000 other items ranging from toys to electronics to household goods.
They’re also partnering with favorite local merchants (the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, Pike Place Fish Market, San Francisco Wine Trading Company, as examples) to provide the same convenient home delivery on a great selection of prepared foods and specialty items.
Their goal? To continue the methodical approach – measuring and refining Amazon Fresh – with the goal of bringing this service to more cities over time.

Amazon is most innovative … E-commerce applications

Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a collection of remote computing services that together make up a cloud computing platform, offered over the Internet. The most central and well-known of these services are the simple storage service, and the elastic compute cloud (EC2).
In 2010, Amazon launched 61 new services and features. In 2011, that number was 82. In 2012, it was 159. In 2013: 280.
They are also expanding their geographic footprint, with ten current AWS regions around the world, including the East Coast of the U.S., two on the West Coast, Europe, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, Brazil, China, and a government-only region called GovCloud.
The development teams work directly with customers and are empowered to design, build, and launch based on what they learn.
 
Prime
Prime launched nine years ago: an ‘all-you-can-eat,’ two-day shipping for a flat annual fee. At that time, Amazon had one million eligible Prime products. This year, they passed 20 million eligible products. They have added new digital benefits – including the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and Prime Instant Video.

Amazon is most innovative … online services

employee empowerment
Employee empowerment.
 Prime Instant Video
Prime Instant Video was launched in 2011 to provide customers with streaming video on demand, analogous to books.
In 2011 with 5,000 titles, they’ve grown selection to more than 40,000 movies and TV episodes.
The Amazon Studios team continues to invest heavily in original content and will compete in the new TV market of the future.

How Sears Lost the Innovative Retail Recipe and Went to the Bottom

Fire TV
In the last month, the Amazon team launched Fire TV. Not only is Fire TV the best way to watch Amazon’s video offerings, but it also embraces non-Amazon content services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, VEVO, WatchESPN, and much more.
In addition to Prime Instant Video, Fire TV gives you instant access to over 200,000 movies and TV episodes available a la carte. As a bonus, Fire TV also lets you play high-quality, inexpensive games on your living room TV.

 

Amazon is most innovative … employee empowerment

Amazon not only innovates outward facing features but also on better ways to do things internally – things that will both make themselves more effective and benefit their employees.
 
Pay to Quit
Pay to quit was invented by the  Zappos’ team (an Amazon company), and the Amazon fulfillment centers have been iterating on it. Pay to Quit is pretty simple. Once a year, they offer to pay employees to leave.
The first year the offer is made, it’s for $2,000. Then it goes up one thousand dollars a year until it reaches $5,000. The headline on offer is “Please Don’t Take This Offer.” While they hope they don’t take the offer, they do want to encourage folks to take a moment and think about what they want.
In the long-run, an employee staying somewhere they don’t want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the company. A good engagement technique, yes?
 
Virtual contact center
It’s an idea Amazon started a few years back and had continued to develop. Under this program, employees provide customer service support for Amazon and Kindle customers while working from home.
This flexibility is ideal for many employees who cannot or prefer not to work outside the home. This Virtual Contact Center is our fastest growing “site” in the U.S., operating in more than ten states.

Amazon is most innovative … listening to customers

Nothing gives Amazon a better result than “reinventing normal” – creating innovations that customers love and resetting their expectations for what normal should be.
Frustration-free packaging
Here Amazon’s battle is against annoying wire ties and plastic clamshells wrapping of products. An initiative that began five years ago with a simple idea that you shouldn’t have to risk bodily injury opening your new electronics or toys has now grown to over 200,000 products, all available in easy-to-open, recyclable packaging.
Packaging designed to alleviate “wrap rage” and help the planet by reducing packaging waste. They include over 2,000 manufacturers in this Frustration-Free Packaging program.
 
Amazon Smile
In 2013 Amazon Smile was launched. This program’s goal was to create a simple way for customers to support their favorite charitable organizations every time they shop. When you shop at smile.amazon.com, Amazon donates a portion of the purchase price to the charity of your choice.
You’ll find the same selection, prices, shipping options, and Prime eligibility on smile.amazon.com as you do on Amazon.com – you’ll even find your same shopping cart and wish lists.
In addition to the large, national charities you would expect, you can also designate your local children’s hospital, your school’s PTA, or practically any other cause you might like. There are almost a million charities to choose from.
 
The Mayday button
Mayday reimagines and revolutionizes the idea of on-device tech support. Tap the Mayday button, and an Amazon expert will appear on your Fire HDX and can co-pilot you through any feature by drawing on your screen, walking you through how to do something yourself, or doing it for you – whatever works best.
Mayday is available 24×7, 365 days a year. Amazon’s response time goal is 15 seconds or less. This last year they beat that goal – with an average response time of only 9 seconds on their busiest day, Christmas. Pretty impressive, yes?

What is the bottom line?

Amazon, we believe, is the most innovative company in America in an industry built on constant innovation and change. Why may you ask?
We believe there several good reasons. First, as one of the creators of the e-commerce industry, they will know the industry is in its infancy and is built on a foundation of new technology and constant introduction of new ways of doing things.
Second, they know their future is based on those trends. They also know to do new things well, they must be good at trying new ideas in many areas as experiments. These experiments, they realize, will not all work as planned, and some percentage will fail. They know and accept this without worry.
There are many great business growth campaigns we can learn from. Please post your comments below, offering questions or your great examples for business innovation strategies.
 Please share
Need some help in improving the innovation process for you and your staff? Innovative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors? Or maybe ways to innovate new products and services?
 
 
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options for innovation workshops to get noticeable results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that struggle gets better every day you learn and apply new innovative ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
 
Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
 
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
  
More reading on creativity and innovation from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Learn How to Think What No One Else Thinks
Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking
Amazon and Managing Innovation … the Jeff Bezos Vision
The Secrets to Building an Innovative Culture
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of the small business. Find him on G+FacebookTwitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.