The Art of Rebranding the Obvious as Innovation
A quick take on the book “Working Backwards”
I recently finished Working Backwards, a book about Amazon written by two of its former executives. It’s certainly interesting and useful — and also a great example of corporate mythology.
The book portrays Jeff Bezos as a sage-like visionary who single-handedly created an industry out of thin air.
There’s no doubt he’s an exceptional figure (even if not every European would agree).
Learning from Amazon’s story makes sense — but only with a few caveats in mind:
Amazon was unprofitable for its first nine years, turning a small profit only in 2003. The book politely glosses over this. Outside the narrow world of venture capital, most CEOs wouldn’t survive missing a single year’s profit target — let alone nearly a decade of losses.
Bezos did see the Internet’s potential early, and that was indeed visionary. But such tectonic shifts are rare. Building your strategy on the hope of catching the next one is risky. Most of us have to operate in the world as it is, not the one we wish for.
Amazon started in retail, a sector with negative working capital: you get paid up front and pay suppliers later. You can be barely profitable — or even operating at a loss — and still have billions in the bank to invest in growth. But if you're in, say, plastics manufacturing, it's the opposite: you pay for raw materials in advance and wait months to get paid. The rules of the game are very different.
The much-praised “working backwards” method — which gave the book its title — is essentially what marketing students have been taught since the 1950s: start with customer needs and work backwards to the product. That this is framed as breakthrough thinking says more about the state of customer-centricity in business than about Amazon’s originality.
Throughout the book, Amazon is described as a flawless decision-making machine, with Bezos portrayed as both visionary founder and ultra-rational manager. But the decision to launch Amazon Prime? It reads more like a founder’s gut call than a model of analytical rigor. In hindsight it worked, so it made it into the mythology.
Both the company and its founder are painted in overly sanitized tones — idealized, flawless, and therefore oddly lifeless.
Bottom line: The book is worth reading — informative, digestible, and not too sugary. But take it with the usual grain of salt.
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Reading it as well though still halfway there - I liked learning about 6 page memo in more detail. But then I dipped into the Amazon subreddit to get a less glossy feel for how the memo is treated in reality.
Someone mentioned to me that while Amazon has a very strong and visceral culture, but that doesn't stop it from experiencing problems larger corporates suffer from today (e.g. politics, cut-throat meritocracy)
100% agree with taking this stuff with a pinch of salt. But it's also great to have access to not only read about a company's processes but also understand the story behind how they came to be.
I often chuckle when reading case studies. These exaggerated 'moments of genius'. But I did hear that ~ Amazon Prime came about because Bezos asked his senior team to work out what a new competitor could do to attack Amazon's market position. They came up with Prime (though it wasn't called that). He liked it so much he adopted it. I haven't read the book Working Backwards - is this story in there?