This blog post is stolen

I thought I’d tell you that up front, before you all started whining and going, ‘He’s a plagiarist! He’s a plagiarist!’ Talent borrows, genius steals and all that, and I have liberated the following insights from an interview that Jeff Bezos did with Wired) a few months back. It didn’t cause much of a stir, but it should have, as there was lots in it that’s relevant to you. And you:

• “We rarely say, ‘Oh my God, we’ve got to do something about that existential threat.’” Specifically in relation to social networking: “We say, ‘Here’s this incredible phenomenon… How can we be inspired by that to make our business better?’” Oh, and by the way:
• “There are always shiny things. A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.” Your brand should be your guide to which bits of shiny you do take on.
• “As a company, we are culturally pioneers, and we like to disrupt even our own business.” All agencies should have this emblazoned above their doors. We only exist to monkey about in pop culture for our clients, and if it means re-engineering ourselves, well, we should.
• “We’re going to make it anyway – let’s sell it.” If you’ve got a problem, why buy a solution in? Why not build a better one yourself, then sell it to other people? Chances are they have the same problem that needs solving too.
• “If you can simplify it for customers, that’s the way to do it.” And that’s true for brand owners and agencies alike. If someone tells you it can be simpler, listen to them. If you don’t, your customers won’t either.

And one final point: it’s all about the long term. “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 endeavors 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.”

Which doesn’t need any gloss from me.