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Business Week has a great interview with Jeff Bezos as part of their innovation issue. The interview is entitled How Frugality Drives Innovation, but Jeff talks about far more than frugality. Here's my favorite bit:
Q: Every company claims to be customer-focused. Why do you think so few are able to pull it off?
A: Companies get skills-focused, instead of customer-needs focused. When [companies] think about extending their business into some new area, the first question is "why should we do that—we don't have any skills in that area." That approach puts a finite lifetime on a company, because the world changes, and what used to be cutting-edge skills have turned into something your customers may not need anymore. A much more stable strategy is to start with "what do my customers need?" Then do an inventory of the gaps in your skills. Kindle is a great example. If we set our strategy by what our skills happen to be rather than by what our customers need, we never would have done it. We had to go out and hire people who know how to build hardware devices and create a whole new competency for the company.
Well worth a read. Another great line: "The key is to pick things that you think are really iimportant, and then focus on them." It seems obvious, but so few of us do it as consistently as we should!
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商业周刊创新这一期里面有一篇非常不错的对Jeff Bezos的采访。题目叫“节俭如何驱动创新”，但是Jeff谈的内容远超出节俭这个话题。下面是我最喜欢的部分：
提问：每个公司都宣称他们以客户为本。你认为为什么很少有公司能做到这一点？
回答：公司往往是以技术为本，而不是以客户需求为本。当企业考虑向新领域扩展他们的业务时首先想到的是“为什么我要这么做，我们没有任何那一领域里的技术。”这样的做法会让公司不可能长久，因为世界在变，曾经的尖端技术会变成你客户不再需要的东西。更好的办法是从“我的客户需要什么”开始，然后检查有哪些技术欠缺。Kindle就是一个好例子。如果我们根据有什么技术而不是客户需要什么来制定战略，永远也做不出来Kindle。我们需要走出去找到那些知道如何构建硬件设备的人从而为公司创造全新的竞争力。
非常值得一读。另外出色的一句是：“关键是找到你认为真正重要的事情，然后全力以赴之。”看似很显然的道理，但是我们很少能像应该的那样一如既往地贯彻它！
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Tim O'Reilly
2008/04/21
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