:: The 4th Era ::

by Sean Blanda

“If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people,” Bezos told Wired in 2011. “But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that.”

-------

"We can’t realize our potential as people or as companies unless we plan for the long term."-------

"In a nod to Bezos’ obsession with long-term thinking, 99U has combed through a dozen interviews and profiles on the CEO and pulled out a handful of his day-to-day habits that can help you keep an eye on the long term, just like Bezos."

by J.J. McCorvey

"As Amazon evolves into a same-day delivery service, its active transportation fleet could become yet another competitive advantage. By supplementing its long-term relationships with UPS and FedEx with its own Fresh trucks, Amazon may well be able to deliver faster than retailers that depend entirely on outside services. "Pretty soon, if you're a retailer with your online business, you're going to be faced with a choice," says Brian Walker, a former analyst at Forrester Research who is now with Hybris, a provider of e-commerce software. "You're not going to be able to match Amazon, so you're going to have to consider partnering with them and leveraging their network."

"This shift could even turn Amazon into a competitor to UPS and FedEx, the long-standing duopoly of next-day U.S. shipping. "If Amazon could do it at enough scale, they could offer shipping at a great value and still eke out some margin," says Walker. "In classic Amazon fashion, they could leverage the infrastructure they've built for themselves, take a disruptive approach to the pricing, and run it as an efficiency play."