Jeff Bezos at Wired Disruptive by Design conference - O'Reilly Radar
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/06/jeff-bezos-at-wired-disruptive.html

We've co-evolved with our tools for thousands of years," he says, explaining how ease of Kindle buying changes behavior. "Reading is an important enough activity that it deserves a purpose-built device....It's a myth that multi-purpose devices are always better.... I like my phone... I like my swiss army knife too, but I'm also happy to have a set of steak knives." "I get grumpy now when I have to read a physical book....The physical book has had a great 500 year run, but it's time to change." "If you're an incumbent in any industry, and rapid change is underway, you're uncomfortable, even if long term it's going to be good." "We've made many errors. People over-focus on errors of commission. Companies over-emphasize how expensive failure's going to be. Failure's not that expensive....The big cost that most companies incur are much harder to notice, and those are errors of Omission."

"At the end of the day, you don't end your strategy because other people don't understand it. Not if you have conviction." This and other quotes from Jeff Bezos, collected by Tim O'Reilly at Wired's 2009 Disruptive by Design conference.

Business wisdom from Jeff Bezos.

Jeff Bezos is very quotable. Listeing to Steve Levy interview him at the Wired Disruptive by Design event in New York, I was furiously taking notes. Here are the quotes I managed to capture.

"There are a few prerequisites to inventing.... You have to be willing to fail. You have to be willing to think long term. You have to be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time. If you can't do those three things, you need to limit yourself to sustaining innovation.... You typically don't get misunderstood for sustaining innovation."

notes on innovation and entrpreneurs

"There are a few prerequisites to inventing.... You have to be willing to fail. You have to be willing to think long term. You have to be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time. If you can't do those three things, you need to limit yourself to sustaining innovation.... You typically don't get misunderstood for sustaining innovation." "At the end of the day, you don't end your strategy because other people don't understand it. Not if you have conviction." [via: http://snarkmarket.com/blog/snarkives/briefly_noted/how_to_invent/]

Bezos: "One of the differences between founder/entrepreneurs and financial managers is that founder/entrepreneurs are stubborn about the vision of the business, and keep working the details. The trick to being an entrepreneur is to know when to be stubborn and when to be flexible. The trick for me is to be stubborn about the big things."