It's Harder To Be Kind Than Clever

What I Want To Talk To You About Today Is The Difference Between Gifts And Choices. Cleverness Is A Gift, Kindness Is A Choice. Gifts Are Easy - They’re Given After All. Choices Can Be Hard. You Can Seduce Yourself With Your Gifts If You’re Not Careful, And If You Do, It’ll Probably Be To The Detriment Of Your Choices.

Part Of Company Culture Is Path-dependent. It’s The Lessons You Learn Along The Way.

If Everything You Do Needs To Work On A Three-year Time Horizon, Then You’re Competing Against A Lot Of People, But If You’re Willing To Invest On A Seven-year Time Horizon, You’re Now Competing Against A Fraction Of Those People, Because Very Few Companies Are Willing To Do That. Just By Lengthening The Time Horizon, You Can Engage In Endeavours That You Could Never Otherwise Pursue. At Amazon We Like Things To Work In Five To Seven Years. We’re Willing To Plant Seeds, Let Them Grow—and We’re Very Stubborn. We Say We’re Stubborn On Vision And Flexible On Details.

One Of The Things That I Hope Will Distinguish Amazon.com Is That We Continue To Be A Company That Defies Easy Analogy. This Requires A Lot Of Innovation, And Innovation Requires A Lot Of Random Walk.

I Like Having The Digital Camera On My Smart Phone, But I Also Like Having A Dedicated Camera For When I Want To Take Real Pictures.