The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
TL;DR
Major successes (AWS, Kindle, Prime) received disproportionate investment
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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