...Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. For Isabella and Calista Stone When you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. —Jeff Bezos, commencement speech at Princeton University, May 30, 2010 Prologue In the early 1970s, an industrious advertising executive named Julie Ray became fascinated with an unconventional public-school program for gifted children in Houston, Texas. Her son was among the first students enrolled in what would later be called the Vanguard program, which stoked creativity and independence in its students and nurtured expansive, outside-the-box thinking. Ray grew so enamored with the curriculum and the community of enthusiastic teachers and parents that she set out to research similar schools around the state with an eye toward writing a book about Texas’s fledgling gifted-education movement. A few years later, after her son had moved on to junior...
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...Introduction Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezos is an American business magnate and investor. He is a technology entrepreneur who has played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products. Under his guidance, Amazon.com became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web and a top model for Internet sales. In 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post newspaper. Background Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a teenage mother, Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen. Bezos's parents were married less than a year, and when Bezos was four years old his mother married his step-father Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant. As a child, Jeff Bezos showed an early interest in how things work, turning his parents' garage into a laboratory and rigging electrical contraptions around his house. As a teenager, his family moved to Miami where he developed a love for computers and excelled in school, becoming the valedictorian of his class. While in high school, he attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida, receiving a Silver Knight Award in 1982. In high school, he also started his first business, the Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for fourth, fifth and sixth graders. Bezos pursued his interest in computers at Princeton University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1986 with a Bachelor of Science...
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...Jeffrey P. Bezos Evan Brown Management Fundamentals Items are purchased off the internet every day, but did you ever stop to think who is in charge of the websites that are providing the fantastic deals that you receiving? Jeffrey Bezos is the CEO of the largest retail website in today’s society, Amazon.com.[1] I am an avid Amazon shopper, which is why I decided to profile their CEO and take a deeper look into the booming corporation. A special type of person is needed to run a fortune 500 company such as Amazon.com. Jeffrey Bezos has been one of the most successful CEO’s that society has seen. He has proven his success by founding Amazon.com, a company that is now ranked 56 out of all fortune 500 companies, and he continues to display his knowledge of his product by improving it yearly even with a little background in the internet field. In 1996, Bezos launched a website known as Amazon.2 He created the website on his own in his garage at his house.[2] He had intended to make a website that consumers could by books from that way they wouldn’t have to spend valuable time shopping at stores and searching for the novels.3 Within two months of creating the site sales reached twenty thousand dollars per week.2 The company went public in 1997, but at that point critics were unsure if the company would be able to contend against its newest online competitors, which were Barns and Nobles and Borders. Bezos continued to show his success after only two years...
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...Lessons learned From Jeff Bezos Jeff Bezos is an excellent leader who is responsible for the rise and growth of Amazon in the world of e-commerce. One of the important lessons to learn from his leadership is that knowledge and intelligence are fundamental to become a good leader. Jeff Bezos focuses mainly on customer needs and continuously tries to enhance the customer experience, hence it took almost an year to develop the customer friendly Amazon website and another three months to test it. He is widely respected in the company for his knowledge and technical expertise. For instance, he pointed out all the key problems in a report presented to him by a supply chain manager in a matter of few minutes which surprised everyone present. One of the most important thing to have as a leader is to possess the ability and knowledge that matches your position. A leader should have the vision, courage and ability to lead the company successfully and moreover should command the respect of his employees. The key lesson to learn from Jeff Bezos is that knowledge and intelligence define a leader and before one becomes a leader he should work hard to acquire the necessary knowledge and possess the ability required to lead others. Besides a numbers of merits, there are also several areas where Jeff Bezos was an ineffective leader. Bezos not giving importance to his employees and being tough on them are some of his mistakes as a leader. It can learnt that it is very important for a leader...
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...Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Jeff Bezos, the leader, had a wide set of values that he obviously followed in all the different decisions he took. The clearest ones are that he is creative, ambitious, broad minded, adventurous, courageous, intellectual and helpful. He has been creative as he thought out of the box and used some statistics about the internet usage rate along with the idea that books isn't a thing that people would need to see and try before buying to mix them together and start the all new idea of selling books online, and thus started a small company based on a dream from his house and then shifted to an office. That was clear in the Harvard business review quoting "Given the attributes of the product and the structure of the supply chain, a no bricks retailer could clearly make it and make it big!". along with creativity came ambition and adventure where his ambition took him a step at a time into new opportunities of renting storage spaces, and allowing bidders to jump in, and compare their prices, it made it clear to customers that Amazon cares a lot about them and wants for them the best bid generating more customer loyalty and satisfaction. He was an intellect when he needed to be one as clear in the Fortune magazine interview saying " he concocted a business plan" meaning he wasn’t all dreamy without facing reality, he also cared about figures and plans to guarantee the idea's success. Helpfulness also came along the way mentioning in the New York state university...
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...F11MANA3001 Jeff Bezos 104 Get your Wikispaces Classroom now: (https://www.wikispaces.com/t/y/classroomswitch/banner/1/) the easiest way to manage your class. Jeff Bezos 104 (/Jeff+Bezos+104) Edit 35 (/Jeff+Bezos+104#discussion) 25 (/page/history/Jeff+Bezos+104) … (/page/menu/Jeff+Bezos+104) Jeff Bezos It takes a lot of guts to leave the comforts of your stable job on Wall Street, then move your family halfway across the country and invest all of your parents’ life savings to start up a new business with merely a 10% chance of success. However, Jeffrey Preston Bezos, later wellknown as “Jeff” Bezos, decided to make the gamble. “I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew one thing I would regret is not trying.” With this philosophy in mind, Bezos created Amazon.com in 1995. Initially, Amazon was just an online bookstore. Over the years though, Amazon diversified its merchandizes and began to sell DVDs, videos, MP3 players, video games and electronics, etc. The humble business, which kicked off in Bezos’s garage, has become a giant online retailer today, shipping a vast range of products to customers around the world. The inspiration for Amazon sparked off when Bezos discovered an amazing phenomenon: internet usage was increasing by 2300% a year. This statistic set off an alarm in his head. He began to brainstorm ideas on how to build a business plan around this growing industry. After doing some research, Bezos decided that books would be the ...
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...Jeff Bezos: Inventor of E-Commerce Biography of Jeffrey P. Bezos Chairman and CEO of Amazon.com Jeffrey P. Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He displayed an outstanding mechanical aptitude, even from an early age. As a teenager, Jeffrey’s family moved to Miami, Florida. His love for computers started in his early high school years and eventually became valedictorian of his class. Furthering his education, he entered into Princeton University to study physics, but soon switched majors and graduated with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. After graduation, Bezos started working on Wall Street for the start-up company, Fitel. After a few observations about the Internet and its trends, he decided to go out on his own and take a chance with his own company. With that, the well-known Amazon.com was born. Bezos should be looked at as an inspiration to not only other entrepreneurs out there, but to anyone who has a great idea and runs with it. Without Jeffrey’s intuition, determination, and exceptional knowledge about the Internet, Amazon.com might not be the great success that it is today. There was no Internet commerce to speak of still in 1994. One day Bezos noticed that the Internet usage was increasing by 2,300 percent a year. He saw an opportunity for a new sphere of business, and immediately began considering his possibilities. He knew the only way to seize the opportunity was to go into business for himself. He and...
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...Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com Life and work story of Jeff Bezos Career Pathways Period of Time Came to this new-established firm after graduate from university Fitel 1986 1990 Worked as a computer science specialist then pointed as a senior vice president D. E. Shaw & Co. 2013 Purchased the newspaper section for $250 million cash of TWP The Washington Post Introduced Amazon.com to public and successfully made $20,000 sales in a week and kept improving the site till now Amazon 1995 2007 Establish an aerospace company, which is aiming to build up human existence in outer space by developing new technology in space flight Blue Origin Jeff bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico on 12th January 1964 with full name of Jeffrey Preston Bezos. He ever turned his parents’ garage into a laboratory and makes cordage of electrical contraptions around house. He pursued his interest by studying computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University, New Jersey, United States. On that time, computer science was in high demand to study market trends. Being graduated from university, Bezos started to work in Fitel, new firm that tried to establish network for international trade. Then he was hired by D. E. Shaw & Co., a global investment firm based in New York City, America and shortly he became a senior vice president in 1990. On July 16, 1995, Bezos opened Amazon.com, named from the South American river which has endlessly...
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...Inside Amazon’s Idea Machine: How Bezos Decodes the Customer Jeff Bezos is known for his customer-centric beliefs and his attention to business details. According to Anders (2013), he "is a notorious micromanager… an executive who wants to know about everything from contract details to how he is quoted in all Amazon press releases”. Jeff Bezos' Amazon.com is the world's largest internet retailer of any kind reporting more than $61 billion in 2012 sales (Anders, 2013). Based on an article published by Forbes in April 2013, this work identifies some of Jeff Bezos’ leadership traits and style that have influenced him to build Amazon into one of most profitable and most admired companies in the world. The article by George Anders (2013), contributor writer for Forbes, highlights how Amazon was transformed from an online bookstore to a giant Internet retailer, Bezos’ customer-centric strategies to figure out what his 164-million customers want and not his 56,000 employees, and how Amazon manages its “culture of metrics” in order to track its performance through about 500 measurable goals. Through Jeff Bezos’ greatest accomplishment of transforming Amazon from an online bookstore to a giant Internet retailer, this author can identify Bezos’ leadership traits, such as intelligence, self-confidence, determination, and integrity, within the framework of Trait Approach. The Trait Approach suggests that organizations will work better if the people in the managerial positions have designated...
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...Jeff Bezos is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Amazon.com. Forbes named him as the 17th most powerful person in 2015, down from 16th in 2014 (The World's Most Powerful People). He is also listed as #4 in Forbes 400, #3 Richest in Tech, #15 Billionaires in the world, and #11 Billionaires in the United States for 2015 (The World’s Most Powerful People). His current net worth is listed as $49.2 billion and changes daily with stock prices (The World's Billionaires). Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 under the name of Cadabra and the name was changed a year later to Amazon (Amazon). Amazon began as an online bookstore based out of a garage. Bezos would drive orders to the post office for delivery each night after working his normal job. With the leadership of Jeff Bezos, Amazon has grown to the largest online retailer in the United States (Amazon). Leadership Style Jeff Bezos has multiple leadership styles. This is important as the leader of a company worth more than $175 billion (The World's Most Innovative Companies). Blanken (2013) explains that “if you’re leading well, you won’t have just one leadership style.” Jeff Bezos can be described as a “task-oriented transactional leader” (Sinha, 2015). Sinha (2015) defines a transactional leader as “one with rigorous benchmarks who is often uninterested in other people’s opinions.” Bezos is so different that other companies, such as Groupon, who have hired many former Amazon employees, have tried to use Bezos’s...
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...from zero. The genius behind this is Jeff Preston. Jeffrey Preston Bezos was born in January 12 1964, in Albuquerque New Mexico. To his mother who was a teen mom, Jacqueline Gise Jorgensen, and to his father,Ted Jorgensen, who was a bike shop owner. His mother gave birth to him when she was only seventeen years old. His father didn’t even show up to his birth and divorced his wife a few months after Jeff was born. After the divorce Jacqueline met up with a Cuban immigrant named Miguel Bezos. Who was a person that studied in the university of New Mexico and got a degree in welding. He is also known for working with the major gas company Exxon. Bezos attended River Oaks...
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...The inspirational speech that I have chosen is ‘Mark Bezos: A life lesson from a volunteer firefighter’. Mark begins by telling us a story of an act of heroism that didn’t quite go how he intended. He is a volunteer firefighter who showed up 2nd to the fire scene. The captain, in charge of assigning tasks, tells the first volunteer to go to the apartment and retrieve the dog of the homeowner, whose house was now in flames. He then tells Mark to go upstairs and get some shoes for the barefooted homeowner. Mark was disappointed in having such a simple task be appointed to him, but did it anyway. A few weeks later the homeowner sends the firefighters a letter thanking them for their service and most importantly, for the kind act of getting her a pair of shoes. The reason I found this speech so inspiring is because it speaks to me logically (logos). After telling us his story, he goes on to tell us the importance of small details and how there’s no better time to do a good deed than the present. Something we all know is that once time passes, it is never coming back. So why don’t we try to make the best out of every moment? Most of us are unfortunately always sitting around and waiting for the perfect moment to come, not knowing that the perfect moment is literally passing us by. Even the simplest of acts play a role in another person’s life. In the words of Mark Bezos “not every day is going to offer us a chance to save somebody's life, but every day offers us an opportunity to...
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... McCovey, 2013). Customers enjoy shopping with Amazon because they can buy without dealing with sales people. They are well known for providing great and reliable service to their customers, and they do not employ sales people. Shopping at home has become an excellent way for many busy individual to shop. Purchase what you want, and pick your options for shipping then back to what you were doing. Orders are usually shipped and received in a timely manner. Amazon’s CEO is Jeff Bezos, who has developed many approaches to increase customer satisfaction. Bezos has created loyalty from his customer’s buy fixing consumer issues, and identifying and correcting persistent problems. Now the CEO has come up with other ideas on how to ship faster, bring more customer satisfaction, how to keep the buyers loyal, starting an on-line grocery store, and so much more. The CEO saw a future in on-line shopping. Whatever the consumer wanted, whenever the customer wanted it, and wherever they wanted the product. Bezos believes that the company can achieve same-day delivery. “Since their creation over fifteen years ago, Amazon has developed three approaches in an attempt to ensure their target market...
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...In order to spread news of Amazon's innovative experiments to not only his company, but the media and public, Jeff Bezos has taken on the spokesperson role. “...Managers in the spokesperson role share information with people outside their departments or companies.” (Williams, 12) Bezos has shared news about products such as the Kindle Fire, Amazon Fresh trucks, and more recently the possible use of airborne drones to make deliveries to Amazon Prime members. These drones are another example of how Amazon is at the forefront of technology; “Prime Air is a future delivery system from Amazon designed to safely get packages to customers in 30 minutes or less using unmanned aerial vehicles, also called drones.” (Amazon) Amazon is on the fast track...
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...CASE PREPARATION CHART |Student Name |MARILYN CHOO LIH CHEEN | |Student ID |1092701475 | |Submission date |5/5/2015 | |Case title |Amazon.Com | |Section |AC 03 | ASSESSMENT To be filled by facilitator |Components |Scores |Scores | | |1 mark |2 marks |3 marks |4 marks | | |Submission |On-time |N/A |N/A |N/A | | | |submission | | | | | |TOTAL | | ...
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