In this session, we review some of the mechanisms and best practices that help us innovate at Amazon, and go through some of the suggestions on how it applies to startups and particularly AWS customers. The goal is to drive simplicity through a continuous, explicit customer focus. Get insights on how we structure our teams for autonomy and speed, and how we’re 'working backwards' from our customers when deciding where to focus engineering efforts.

1. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Innovation @ Amazon
ASAF ANOLIK, HEAD OF INNOVATION PROGRAMS
AMAZON WEB SERVICES

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Agenda
• Why is innovation important to us
• What is innovation for us
• How we innovate:
Culture
Mechanisms
Organization
• Key Takeaways
• Q&A

3. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Agenda
• Why is innovation important to us
• What is innovation for us
• How we innovate:
Culture
Mechanisms
Organization
• Key Takeaways
• Q&A

4. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Why is innovation important?
Market Size - Up
By adoption
By unlocking
By funding
Productivity - Up
Tools
Addressable users
Tech Cost - Down
Economies of scale
Automation
Price reductions
Pay per use

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6. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Why is innovation important?

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10. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Agenda
• Why is innovation important to us
• What is innovation for us
• How we innovate:
Culture
Mechanisms
Organization
• Key Takeaways
• Q&A

11. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Innovation at Amazon (1995)

12. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
PrimeAir
Advanced Shopping
Kindle Reader Fire TV
Grocery Delivery
Amazon Video
Home AutomationCloud Computing
Examples from today

13. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Pace of Innovation – New capabilities daily
516
24 48 61 82
159
280
722
1,017
LAUNCHES
2 0 0 8 2 0 0 9 2 0 1 0 2 0 1 1 2 0 1 2 2 0 1 3 2 0 1 4 2 0 1 5 2 0 1 6
1,430
2 0 1 7

14. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Why is turning ideas to reality so hard?
Funding
Fund-raising and
access to capital
Commercials
Time-to-Market, Go-
to-Market, Legal
Time
Planning, creating, and
operating a business
Product
Validation, Market-fit,
Value-proposition
Talent / Expertise
Acquiring, training,
and retaining talent
Culture
Mindset, Speed, Risk,
Decision-making

15. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Agenda
• Why is innovation important to us
• What is innovation for us
• How we innovate
Culture
Mechanisms
Organization
• Key Takeaways
• Q&A

16. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Our approach
Customer Obsession
“Start every process
with the customer
and work
backwards.”
Long Term Thinking
“Be stubborn on the
vision but flexible on
the details.”
“We are comfortable
being
misunderstood for a
long period of time.”
Willingness to fail
“Invention requires
two things: the
ability to try a lot of
experiments, and
not having to live
with the collateral
damage of failed
experiments.”

17. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Our execution
Culture: Hire
builders, guided by
our Leadership
Principles
Architecture:
Empower
innovators through
self-service tools.
Organization:
Decentralize
authority to single-
threaded teams
that own what they
create
Mechanisms:
Encoded behaviors
that turn ideas into
meaningful
innovations

18. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Agenda
• Why is innovation important to us
• What is innovation for us
• How we innovate
Culture
Mechanisms
Organization
• Key Takeaways
• Q&A

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Culture – Hire builders

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Culture - failure

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Learning - from failures

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Learning - from successes

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Agenda
• Why is innovation important to us
• What is innovation for us
• How we innovate
Culture
Mechanisms
Organization
• Key Takeaways
• Q&A

24. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Working Backwards
Customer Press Release FAQs Visuals

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What won’t be simple – simply won’t be
“We will optimize the customer
experience to enable enhanced
accuracy in Buy-Box pricing to
facilitate increased rapidity and
elevated confidence in purchase
decisioning by cross-border retail
customers.”
“Amazon makes it easier for
international shoppers to decide
what to purchase by showing
them the total landed cost of an
item. Total landed cost includes
all taxes, duties, and shipping
costs.”

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27. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
High Velocity Decision Making
1-WAY DOOR
Consequential and irreversible or
nearly irreversible decisions.
2-WAY DOOR
Most decisions are changeable,
reversible.

28. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Agenda
• Why is innovation important to us
• What is innovation for us
• How we innovate
Culture
Mechanisms
Organization
• Key Takeaways
• Q&A

29. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Two-Pizza teams
Amazon Achieves Speed and Agility with small single-threaded teams.
Decentralized Ownership & Autonomy.

30. The
Institutional
YES!

31. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.

32. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Key Takeaways
• Experiment as much as you can - We are here to help.
• Reduce cost of failure – fast and cheap
• Future-proof for your customers – their needs will evolve
• Future-proof for your staff – they’ll need more capabilities
• We want to invent on your behalf – talk to us

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Thank you
ASAF ANOLIK | MAY 9TH 2018