来自亚马逊CEO Jeff Bezos的20句经验之谈 The 20 Smartest Things Jeff Bezos Has Ever Said
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本文作者Morgan Housel，原载于Motley fool。
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当外界对一个公司的热情有些偏离常态时， 就会出现武断的言论，亚马逊对此就深有感受。2000 年之际，前后跨度 14 个月的时间里， “亚马逊创始人被评为时代周刊年度人物”和“分析师担心亚马逊即将破产”这样的头条新闻先后粉墨登场，这在商业史上当真鲜有先例。
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但 13 年后，亚马逊仍旧生机勃勃，而且地位稳固。其现在的业务跟初始的图书销售可说是大相径庭。该公司现在的股价已经达到了互联网泡沫高峰时期的 3 倍。而亚马逊今天的成功都归功于其性情怪异的 CEO Jeff Bezos。他开创了一种大多数商业领袖所不以为然的商业文化。对于商业，他有很多一针见血的论断，以下是来自 Bezos 的 20 条中肯建议。
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1. 所有的企业都需要青春永驻。如果客户群跟你一起变老，你就会重蹈 Woolworth's 的覆辙。
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2. 这个世界上有两种公司：一种总想着如何提价，另一种总想着降低价格。我们是第二种。
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3. 帮客户赚钱就是我们的机会。
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4. 如果你只做那些答案就在眼皮子底下的事情，你的公司就没希望了。
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5.18 年来，有三个理念是亚马逊一直坚持的：客户至上；创新；保持耐心。
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6. 我常常被问道：”接下来 10 年里会有什么变化？”这是一个高频的、有趣的问题。可我几乎没听到过这样一个问题：“有什么是以后 10 年内都恒定不变的？”但我要向你申明的是第二个问题。因为假以时日，你可以围绕这些常量建立起一套一以贯之的企业战略。在零售业中，客户想要是更低的价位；高效的快递服务；还有丰富的选择。找到 10 年后的客户以及弄清楚 10 年后他们的口味都是不可能的。“Jeff ，我爱亚马逊；再把价格抬高些吧；或者”我爱亚马逊，快递再慢点吧。“痴心妄想。所以我们今天所投入的努力在 10 年后依然会裨益我们的客户。如果你找到了商业中这个恒定的真理，为它长期付出努力是值得的。
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7. 如果足够灵活，你就会适时放弃某些尝试。如果太顽固的话，你很容易因一叶障目而错失解决问题的好办法。
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8. 任何初次试水的商业计划在实施时都难免碰壁，现实总会跟计划不太一样，现实终归是现实，计划只是计划。
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9. 从前，你需要投入 30% 的时间做服务，70% 的时间搞宣传，而现在，情况刚好相反。
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10. 我们做过价格弹性研究，得出的结果总是让我们提价。我们偏不这么做，因为我们认为，正是通过保持低价我们才赢得了客户的信任，就长期来看，这是保持现金流最大化的佳径。
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11. 我建立了一套非常简易的决策机制（始于 1994 年），我把它称为”后悔最小化机制 "。当我 80 岁回首人生时，我希望值得自己后悔的事情少之又少。我确信自己 80 岁时一定不会后悔尝试过现在所做的事情。我不会后悔涉足过了不起的互联网行业。即便失败了，我也不会绝不后悔。如果没有这样做，我才会每天被后悔所折磨。
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12. 我们的创新总是从客户的需求出发，客户的需求永远是革新的试金石。
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13. 当早晨沐浴时，而我们的竞争对手想的是如何超越别人争做第一，而我们所想的却是从客户的角度出发努力创新。
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14. 一个公司不应该沉醉在光芒中，因为光芒常常瞬息即逝。
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15. 我认为节俭驱动创新，正如其它约束条件所做的那样。突破创新的方法之一就是开辟一条新的路径。
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16. 如果你加倍地做实验，相应的创新成果也会加倍。
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17. 如果你害怕批评，那你永远也不会有创新。
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18. 如果你能从长远目标出发，客户和股东的利益其实是一致的。
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19. 创新得到理解需假以时日。你要对自己要做的事情保有信念，但久而久之，有些好心人可能会批评你所做的事情，这个时候你有应该学会发问，“他们说的对么？”如果他们是对的，你有必要适时做出调整。如果不对，你需要耐心等待他们的理解。这是创新在所难免的。
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20. 你需要适度关注其它公司的动静。避免封闭化十分重要。关注别的公司并不是要抄袭它们的做法，真正的关注点在于“他们这样做对我们有什么启发呢？”接下来你要做的是拿出属于自己的新东西来。
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1. "All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you're Woolworth's."
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2. "There are two kinds of companies: Those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second."
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3. "Your margin is my opportunity."
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4. "If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away."
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5. "We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient."
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6. "I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two -- because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. ... [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, 'Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,' [or] 'I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly.' Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it."
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7. "If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve."
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8. "Any business plan won't survive its first encounter with reality. The reality will always be different. It will never be the plan."
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9. "In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts."
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10. "We've done price elasticity studies, and the answer is always that we should raise prices. We don't do that, because we believe -- and we have to take this as an article of faith -- that by keeping our prices very, very low, we earn trust with customers over time, and that that actually does maximize free cash flow over the long term."
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11. "The framework I found, which made the decision [to start Amazon in 1994] incredibly easy, was what I called a regret minimization framework. I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, 'OK, I'm looking back on my life. I want to minimize the number of regrets I have.' And I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed, I wouldn't regret that. But I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day."
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12. "We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent."
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13. "When [competitors are] in the shower in the morning, they're thinking about how they're going to get ahead of one of their top competitors. Here in the shower, we're thinking about how we are going to invent something on behalf of a customer."
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14. "A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last."
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15. "I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."
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16. "If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you're going to double your inventiveness."
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17. "If you never want to be criticized, for goodness' sake don't do anything new."
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18. "If you're long-term oriented, customer interests and shareholder interests are aligned."
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19. "Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood. You do something that you genuinely believe in, that you have conviction about, but for a long period of time, well-meaning people may criticize that effort. When you receive criticism from well-meaning people, it pays to ask, 'Are they right?' And if they are, you need to adapt what they're doing. If they're not right, if you really have conviction that they're not right, you need to have that long-term willingness to be misunderstood. It's a key part of invention."
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20. "You want to look at what other companies are doing. It's very important not to be hermetically sealed. But you don't want to look at it as if, 'OK, we're going to copy that.' You want to look at it and say, 'That's very interesting. What can we be inspired to do as a result of that?' And then put your own unique twist on it."
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