Benedict Evan’s most recent blog post, called “Amazon as experiment,” draws some interesting parallels between what Amazon is doing today (and experimenting with) and the beginning of mass retail, namely the invention of the department store. He also talks about some of the shortcomings of… Read More
The below chart from this morning’s Wall Street Journal is perhaps a good example of our ongoing transformation from an industrial economy to an information economy. Just four stocks — namely Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook — have accounted for 19% of the S&P 500’s… Read More
Kawhi Leonard doesn’t say very much, but when he does, he tends to focus the discussion less on himself and more on the achievements of the Toronto Raptors as a whole. He has said many times before in interviews that he doesn’t aspire to be… Read More
Back in 2016, the United States Postal Service published a report on the public perception of drone delivery in the US. This was nearly 3 years after Jeff Bezos announced on 60 Minutes that Amazon was working on a drone delivery service and that it… Read More
Jeff Bezos published his annual letter to shareowners this week. You can find it here. And as is his usual practice, he has attached his 1997 letter to shareholders at the bottom of it. This is his “Day 1” and he clearly likes the reminder.… Read More
As I am sure you have all heard, there’s a lot of debate in New York right now (city and state) about whether they should reject Amazon’s decision to open up a new headquarters in Queens. Urbanist Richard Florida has been arguing that one of… Read More
According to Amazon’s recent annual 10-K filing, the company leased and owned (most of their space is leased) about 288,419,000 square feet of space around the world at the end of 2018. Of this number, about 80% is used for “fulfillment, data centers, and other.”… Read More
Welcome to 2019. I am currently in transit and catching up on some internet reading and email on my way back to Toronto. At this time of year it is, of course, common to reminisce (or lament) about what happened over the last year, as… Read More
So I was wrong. Amazon didn’t pick Toronto for HQ2. It instead picked Crystal City, Virginia (Washington) and Long Island City, NY (New York City). More on that, here, in the NY Times. Confession: My prognostication was at least partially about trying to create a… Read More
This is not new. It has been reported on before. But I just finished reading this article about Jeff Bezos’ relentless commitment to “high-quality and high-velocity decision making” at Amazon. Here are a couple of high level points: – There are decisions that cannot be easily… Read More
