Oversized, Declared Ambitions

A company having outsized ambitions is something you laugh at… until it comes true. Think of Steve Jobs’ intention to make a “dent in the universe”: laughable until he invented the iPhone and the smartphone market.

Or take Google’s mission statement to “organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”. But at least one could argue that was declared by its founders when they were still college kids, an age when it’s the norm to be hyper-ambitious and unrealistic!

Or look at Amazon. Back in 1997 when the Internet was just getting started, Amazon started off as a book retailer. And yet, even back then, their declared mission made clear their outsized ambitions:
“Amazon.com’s objective is to be the leading online retailer of information-based products and services, with an initial focus on books.”
Within a few years after 1997, this was their updated mission statement:
“Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”
Contrast such open declarations of intent with the secrecy of Apple!

Just 2 years ago, the CEO of a large grocery chain in the US (Whole Foods) said that groceries would be Amazon’s Waterloo. And today? Amazon just bought Whole Foods! With hindsight, such an acquisition seems obvious: after all, groceries account for about 20% of consumer spending; so it was a logical area for Amazon to continue in.

All of which is why Ben Thompson, a tech analyst, said in a recent podcast that “Amazon’s goal is to take a cut of all economic activity”. It would be very foolish to laugh at Amazon’s ambitions. Will they fail in some areas? Definitely. But will they win in many more? Almost certainly. And will their scope keep expanding? It sure looks that way.

The IT industry seems to take to heart that famous line from Apple’s ad:
“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Ironically, Thompson says that the Whole Foods CEO may have gotten it right when he called groceries as Amazon’s Waterloo. How?
“Indeed, to the extent Waterloo is a valid analogy, Amazon is much more akin to the British Empire.”
Ha ha! Nice flip: while Waterloo is always used as a term for decisive defeat (Napoleon), it also marked the beginning of an extended period of unprecedented world domination for the other actor of that battle (Britain).

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