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We like to all imagine ourselves as innovators. As people who, if given the perfect formula of inspiration and time, could come up with ideas that are not only impactful, but profitable. There’s the sort of “entrepreneurial spirit” that is drilled into most American’s at birth. Perhaps no better example of this is the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos. Not merely content to be the world’s foremost distributer of books you’re too embarrassed to buy publicly (I’m looking at you, 50 Shades of Grey), Bezos and his Amazon brand now own Whole Foods, the Washington Post, most of the Seattle skyline, and several key pieces of personal information thanks to their Ecco products.
But what if that just…never happened? What if Bezos was simply content to sell books, and realized he could continue to hone his craft doing what he was already doing really well. What would happen to Bezos? What would happen to Amazon? And what would happen to us?
Thanks, Tyler, makes me want to see a new version of “what if the Sherman Anti-trust act was enforced on Amazon/other tech giants.”
Oh didn’t you have fun “Starbarnes” and “Amazon U.” I confess to having been sucked into his evil empire. Prime member, WP subscriber, even carry Amazon credit card. You have throughly shamed me.
Hi Tyler, I love the creativity in this post. You really thought through the minute ways in which our world would have changed if Amazon really had just kept to books. It’s definitely interesting to think about whether our American consumer spirits would have driven a different corporation (Starbucks?) to create a similar conglomerate. Nice post!
Coming from an Amazon employee, this is very interesting!! What I can see is that if Amazon were to just sell books, they would sell a lot of money, but just not as much as they were to today because amazon is expanding with selling everything.