Citation
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
TL;DR
Major successes (AWS, Kindle, Prime) received disproportionate investment
Stone's comprehensive history of Amazon documents the company's product development pattern of many small experiments with occasional massive bets. The book provides evidence for Amazon's Lévy flight strategy: most product launches were incremental category expansions while transformative investments like AWS, Kindle, and Prime represented giant leaps.
This source shows how Bezos intuitively applied search pattern optimization matching power-law market distributions.
Key Findings from Stone (2013)
- Amazon launched hundreds of products with high failure rate
- Major successes (AWS, Kindle, Prime) received disproportionate investment
- Failed experiments were killed quickly without sunk cost attachment
- Pattern matches Lévy flight: mostly small steps, occasional giant jumps