E11: John Rossman, The Amazon Way

On E11, Dave's guest is John Rossman, author of The Amazon Way
and Think Like Amazon - two bestselling books about the company's
culture of innovation that he experienced firsthand as the former
head of merchant integration for the Amazon Marketplace business.


Every company now needs to have an Amazon Strategy. Whether
you're selling on Amazon, using their services or selling a
product / service that Amazon can also offer, Amazon always needs
to be on your radar. With over 74% of US consumers beginning
their product searches on Amazon, 147m Prime subscribers (nearly
half of the US population), and more than half (56%) of consumers
say that if they were only able to buy products from a single
store, it would be Amazon. The company generated $386 billion
revenue in 2020, making it the third largest company in the world
by revenue.


In 2002, John was hired as the director of merchant integration
to play a key role in scaling the newly-launched Amazon
Marketplace business, which now accounts for well over 50% of all
orders at Amazon and has over two million sellers. It is an
ecosystem that impacts global supply chains and is one of the
“dreamy businesses” Bezos talks about. But the success of this
business wasn’t preordained — in fact, most thought it would
fail.


Dave and John talk about the lessons innovators and change agents
can learn from Jeff Bezos and his organization's approach to
innovation, management and winning.