," a collection of writings and public statements by Jeff Bezos, with an introduction by journalist and biographer Walter Isaacson.
"If we build a new fulfillment center and it's a disaster, that's just bad execution. That's not good failure," Bezos said. "But when we are developing a new product or service or experimenting in some way, and it doesn't work, that's okay. That's great failure." I treat every problem that I hear about from a customer as an opportunity to improve. My email address, jeff@amazon.com, is well known. I keep that address and read my emails, though I don't see every single one anymore because I get too many. But I see a lot of them, and I use my curiosity to pick out certain emails.
Most of the inventing we do at Amazon goes like this: somebody has an idea, other people improve the idea, other people come up with objections for why it can never work, and then we solve those objections. It's a very fun process. We were always wondering what a loyalty program could be, and then a junior software engineer came up with the idea that we could offer people a kind of all-you-can-eat buffet of fast, free shipping.
During that era I found myself on television, alongside half a dozen internet entrepreneurs, being interviewed by Tom Brokaw. Tom is now one of my good friends, but at the time he turned to me and said, "Mr. Bezos, can you even spell profit?" And I said, "Sure, P-R-O-P-H-E-T." He burst out laughing.
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