Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1333252
doing than by further analysis. The present crisis should encourage leaders to walk through the two-way door and see what may be on the other side. Put more bluntly, if your team is motivated to experiment, the cost is low and there is the chance to learn–why not give it a try? When you have determined where you're going to innovate, investing in the right innovations is more important than ever. Moving fast can also mean moving further in the wrong direction if you make an early error. At Amazon, we focus relentlessly on our end customer to guide our innovation. In his 2016 letter to shareholders, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said, "Even when they don't yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf." So–very practically–ask yourself some searching questions. First, who is the customer? Not a segment of people or a generic persona that could be anyone's customer, but who is your customer? Next, what is their most pressing problem or opportunity? Again, be specific. Given the already massive challenge of innovating successfully, your chances of solving two or more problems at once is vanishingly small. Choose one, and focus on it. Notice that you have not–yet–even thought about a solution. You are just understanding, empathizing, considering. Then, given this customer with that problem, or opportunity, how could you delight them? You enter a process of iteration. Sketch out a solution and–again being specific–describe what the main benefit or opportunity would be to this customer you first identified. Have you delighted them? Perhaps not. Does that mean the solution is not yet right? Probably. Or perhaps–just maybe–you have learned something new about your customer by looking at them and their problem in this way and need to go back to the previous step. Finally, you have it: a customer, a problem, and a solution. At Amazon, the next step in our process is to produce three documents. First, we write a press release as if the product or service has been launched. This helps frame the issue at hand. We focus on the customer's need, not competitors or profits. We are careful not to use industry jargon,and everyone should be able to understand it. This one-page document is supported by a 'Frequently Asked Questions' (FAQ) document, where we list all of the questions a customer or internal stakeholder may have–and then answer them one by one. It sharpens the idea, and saves time because one document should answer reader questions. This is the PR-FAQ, and it is the document that underpins every innovation in Amazon. It guides our experimentation–which is what comes next. To experiment quickly–especially now–you need to defray the costs of innovation. This means making experimentation fast and easy by using tools, automation, and agile development to rapidly build, validate, test, scale or abandon experiments. It means building and using services where you pay only for what you use rather than capacity that sits idle. And it also means that once you have a winner,you can scale securely and reliably to all your customers at once–without extensive and costly roll-out plans. With these in place, only one's pride is at stake when an experiment does not work out. But you can embrace the rich lessons obtained at low cost, and move on to the next project.