Jeff Bezos on how to build a business strategy “I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?” And that is an interesting question… But I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.” Jeff argues: “You can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery. They want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon, I just wish the prices were a little higher.’ Or, ‘I love Amazon, I just wish you’d deliver a little slower.’ Impossible. And so we know the energy we put into these things today will still be paying dividends for our customers 10 years from now.” He gives AWS as another example. It’s impossible to imagine AWS customers asking for a less reliable or more expensive service. ”When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it… The big ideas in business are often very obvious, but it’s very hard to maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times. But if you can do that and continue to spin up those flywheels and put energy into those things, over time, you build a better service for your customers on the things that genuinely matter to them.” Video source: @awscloud (2012)