Bill Carr
Former VP of Digital Media at Amazon
Spent 15 years at Amazon starting five years after founding, launched Amazon Music, Prime Video, and Amazon Studios as VP of Digital Media; co-author of the book Working Backwards which codifies Amazon's management practices.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Bill Carr, 15-year Amazon veteran and co-author of Working Backwards, provides a detailed inside look at Amazon's management operating system including the working backwards process, single-threaded leadership, input vs output metrics, the Bar Raiser hiring program, and disagree-and-commit culture. He reveals that nearly all of Amazon's iconic processes and products were created in a concentrated 2003-2007 window when the company needed systematic mechanisms to scale beyond founder involvement in every decision.
Leadership Principles
- → Start with what's best for the customer and come backward from there — if you serve customers well, revenue and growth will follow
- → Amazon's innovation came from process innovation as much as product innovation — both product and process were developed in the same 2003-2007 window
- → Leadership principles must be reinforced by specific processes to be real — without processes they're just posters on the wall
Notable Quotes
"Jeff would say, we took it as an article of faith. If we served customers well, if we prioritized customers and delivered for them, things like sales, revenue and active customers and the share price and free cash flow would follow. So when we're making a decision, we're going to start with what's best for the customer and come backward from there."
— On Amazon's customer obsession philosophy and the origin of 'Working Backwards'
"Amazon was actually, to some degree, equally focused on process innovation. We stood on other people's shoulders. That's what all great companies should do. We would like to allow people to stand on Amazon's shoulders to learn what we learned."
— On why Amazon's process innovations matter as much as its product innovations
"All of the products and all of the processes except for one were all developed in this one four year period from 2003 to 2007. This is where we were going from hypergrowth, zero to one, to one to infinity."
— On the concentrated period of innovation at Amazon
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