I wanted to share a snippet of a great article in the New York Times about the e-tail war between Amazon and EBay.
Last year, [Amazon] impressed investors with accelerating growth, and its stock price revisited the highs of the dot-com boom, before waning euphoria and market pessimism erased more than half of those gains this year. Mr. Bezos credits Amazon’s tolerance for risky, expensive bets like the Kindle electronic reading device.
“Our willingness to be misunderstood, our long-term orientation and our willingness to repeatedly fail are the three parts of our culture that make doing this kind of thing possible,” he said.
EBay’s recent problems have made Mr. Bezos and his team look like shrewd and patient stewards of the Amazon franchise. And Amazon’s second wind is making eBay look as if it has missed one of the greatest opportunities in the Internet’s short history.
I think there are great learnings in there for all businesses no matter how big and sprawlingly succesfull you are. Always be restless. Question everything. Never take success for granted.
