In 2013, at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, T-Mobile CEO John Legere confidently stepped onto the stage, prepared to place a bet. But this was no ordinary Vegas gamble. It was a high-stakes wager on the future of his company—this was a Big Bet.
Original ideas are in short supply. However, anyone can fill a toolbox with existing great ideas and learn how to apply the right ones at the right moments. When I was a consulting partner at Arthur Andersen, I knew someone else had created a methodology, tool, proposal, or analysis that could get me going. I just needed to know how to find it.
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. ~ George Bernard Shaw How do Amazon’s leaders decide what to do and what not to do? How do they develop ideas and rationalize them? Much the same way they hire the best people. They use the narrative process to answer these questions and to capture and explain their ideas.
What are Amazon’s greatest innovations? Drones? Cloud computing? Echo and Alexa? These are impressive; some are even revolutionary. However, I believe Amazon’s greatest innovations are the ones that have changed the basics of competing to the point where they now sound mundane.
