Published on: December 2, 2013
by Kevin CoupeLast night's 60 Minutes broadcast on CBS led with a profile of Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, which is worth watching for all sorts of reasons … not least of which is his revelation that the company is investing in the development of drone technology that will use octocopters to deliver packages of up to five pounds, and ideally will be able to deliver packages in select markets within 30 minutes of an order being placed. (For the record, Bezos says that 86 percent of the packages shipped by Amazon are five pounds or less.)
Bezos acknowledges that this is an R&D project that can't be put into place "before 2015, because that’s the earliest we could get the rules from the FAA. My guess is that’s, that’s probably a little optimistic. But could it be, you know, four, five years? I think so. It will work, and it will happen, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun."
You can watch the entire story here.
Some other Bezos quotes from the Charlie Rose-reported piece:
• "The secret is we’re on, like, our seventh generation of fulfillment centers. And we have gotten better every time. When I was driving the packages myself, one of my visualizations of success is that we might one day be big enough that we could afford a forklift."
• "I would define Amazon by our big ideas, which are customer-centricity, putting the customer at the center of everything we do, invention. We like to pioneer, we like to explore, we like to go down dark alleys and see what’s on the other side."
• "In the long run, if you take care of customers, that is taking care of shareholders. We do price elasticity studies. And every time the math tells us to raise prices." But, Bezos says, to raise prices "would erode trust. And that erosion of trust would cost us much more in the long term."
• "The long term approach is rare enough that it means you’re not competing against very many companies. 'Cause most companies wanna see a return on investment in, you know, one, two, three years. I care (about that), but I’m willing for it to be five, six, seven years. So just that change in timeline can be a very big competitive advantage."
• "The Internet is disrupting every media industry, Charlie, you know, people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy."
It is an Eye-Opener.
- KC's View: