Learning Team Activity: Strategic Planning and Implementation Project

Amazon.com began July 16, 1995 in a two bedroom home by founder Jeff Bezos as an online bookstore (Bio, 2014). Within two months of opening, the online bookstore was growing at a rapid pace with sales of $20,000 per week. In 1997, the company went public and continued to grow despite what market analysis thought. Bezos diversified Amazon.com’s products to include CDs, clothing, electronics, and more. The drive for diversification, innovation, and knowledge of value proposition has resulting in significant growth in about a decade (Learning from Amazon's success, 2012). In 2007, Amazon.com released the e-reader Kindle resulting in the sales of six Kindle books for every ten physical book sold (Treanor, 2010). While Amazon.com remains strong in its origins of books, it has recognized the need for investments and acquisitions in technology infrastructure to provide support, resulting in acquiring businesses around the world. Throughout Amazon.com’s history the company looks at its long-term strategies and remains dedicated to reducing costs, obsessing over the customer, and focusing on innovation.

Innovative Culture

The organizational culture at Amazon fosters creativity and innovation, allowing the company to find and develop new ways for potential growth. Expanding from merely a book selling website to offering millions of products to customers, Amazon survived the dot-com bust because it had a viable and innovative business model built around a market-changing customer value proposition and a radical profit formula (Johnson, 2010). By following the same business model the company has had since it’s beginning, Amazon has been able to break into new markets, most recently instant streaming television and movies, AmazonLocal, which is a likeness of Groupon, offering customers savings for local attractions along with discounted products, and even the popular joke of using Drones to deliver packages. When Amazon finds opportunities to serve new and existing customers, its innovative culture and ability to transform jumps right at the opportunity, and develops the business models to launch and run them.