Jeff Bezos's Impact on Amazon Culture

Jeff Bezos's Impact on Amazon Culture

One of the great examples of the founders who had a significant impact on the culture of the organization they founded is Jeff Bezos. It is clear that Bezos is one of the entrepreneurs whose behavior has been clearly visible on Amazon since he founded it in 1994. Culture is mostly the sum of formal and informal systems, values, and behaviors that create an experience for the employees and customers. This was true in the case of Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Therefore, from the view of Jeff Bezos, it is clear that some of the values and behaviors he possessed and imbibed in Amazon are discussed in the following points.

From the analysis of the founder, it is fundamental that the quest for innovation was one of the values and behavior of Bezos. It is clear that the tendency of Jeff's innovation traces back to his childhood, where a famous story indicates that in his early days as a child, he invented an alarm system to control siblings that intruded and disturbed him. This act of innovation has been quite visible at Amazon, starting from transforming a book-selling website into a marketplace, making it easy for the company to sell its products across the world. In fact, because of Bezos's innovation orientation, the Amazon Echo and Kindle have been able to maintain the leadership position in the digital and online market. Also, risk-taking appetite was another behavior of Jeff Bezos (DEAN, 2021). For instance, before starting Amazon, Bezos had given up his well-paid job. In most cases, Jeff believed in risking taking but in a calculated manner. On one occasion, he once said that he looks to the future and sees one of his risks becoming beneficial to Amazon company. Amazon's risk-taking appetite has been seen because the company initially chose to take head-on by launching Kindle against the iPad, which is paying off well for the company today. Also, quick decision-making was part of his behavior of Jeff because he believed in delegating and making agile decisions in the company because of Amazon's decentralized decision-making culture.

Although Jeff Bezos, founder of the company, took it to the greatest level, he is not involved with the organization currently. He stepped down as CEO of the company after being in charge for 27 years. The founder's successor was Andy Jassy, who joined Amazon shortly after graduating from Harvard Business school in 1997 (Allyn, 2021). The reason Andy replaced Bezos is because of his long-term experience with the company, and also, the founder felt that by having him as his successor, he would be able to focus on other projects addressing climate change and his space exploration company of Blue Origin.

References

Allyn, B. (2021, July 05). Jeff Bezos built Amazon 27 years ago. He now steps down as CEO at Critical Time. Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://www.npr.org

DEAN, G. (2021). These are the 14 leadership principles that Jeff Bezos established at Amazon, and they still drive the company today. Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://africa.businessinsider.com