Brad Stone - Amazon Unbound

Amazon Unbound

Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire

Brad Stone

Author of The Everything Store

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To my father, Robert Stone

His genius was not in inventing; rather, it was in inventing a system of invention. Dozens of researchers and engineers and developmental tinkerers labored beneath Edison in a carefully constructed hierarchical organization that he founded and oversaw.

Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night: A Novel

It has always seemed strange to me. The things we admire in menkindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding, and feelingare the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detestsharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self-interestare the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second.

John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

I t was the kind of large indoor gathering that would soon feel anachronistic, like an ancient custom from a lost civilization. On a Sunday night in November 2019, one month before Covid-19 first appeared in Wuhan, China, kicking off the worst pandemic in modern history, luminaries from the worlds of politics, media, business, and the arts gathered at the Smithsonians National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and hundreds of other guests packed the museum courtyard for an invitation-only, black-tie affair. They were there to celebrate the addition of six new portraits to the gallerys permanent collection, honoring iconic Americans such as Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, as well as the richest person in the world: Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos.

Bezoss lifelike portrait by the photorealistic painter Robert McCurdy depicted him against a stark white background, wearing a crisp white shirt, silver tie, and the severe gaze that had flustered Amazon employees over the last twenty-five years. In his speech that night, accepting the Portrait of a Nation Prize for commitment to service, creativity, individuality, insight, and ingenuity, Bezos thanked his large coterie of family and colleagues in the audience and struck a characteristic note of public humility.

My life is based on a large series of mistakes, he said, after an eloquent introduction from his oldest son, nineteen-year-old Preston. Im kind of famous for it in the business realm. How many people here have a Fire Phone? The crowd guffawed and was silentAmazons 2014 smartphone had infamously bombed. Yeah, no, none of you do. Thanks, he said to laughs.

Every interesting thing Ive ever done, every important thing Ive ever done, every beneficial thing Ive ever done, has been through a cascade of experiments and mistakes and failures, Bezos continued. Im covered in scar tissues as a result of this. He recalled selecting McCurdy from binders of artists provided by the museum, and said he was looking for someone who would paint me hyper-realistically, with every flaw, every imperfection, every piece of scar tissue that I have.

The audience responded to Bezoss speech with a rapturous standing ovation. It was that kind of evening. The band Earth, Wind & Fire played, guests drank and danced, and the comedian James Corden presented an award to Wintour while impersonating her in a blond wig, black sunglasses, and fur-lined coat. Ask Jeff Bezos to get me a coffee! he vamped. The well-heeled crowd roared in delight.

Outside that prosperous gathering though, the feelings toward Amazon and its CEO in the midst of the companys twenty-sixth year were far more complicated. Amazon was booming, but its name was stained. Wherever there was applause, there was also discordant criticism. Amazon was admired and even beloved by customers while its secretive intentions were often mistrusted, and the towering net worth of its founder, set against the plight of its blue-collar workforce in company warehouses, provoked unsettling questions about the asymmetric distribution of money and power. Amazon was no longer just an inspiring business story but a referendum on society, and on the responsibilities that large companies have toward their employees, their communities, and the sanctity of our fragile planet.

Bezos had attempted to address that latter concern by conceiving the Climate Pledge, a promise that Amazon would be carbon neutral by 2040, ten years before the most ambitious goals set by the Paris climate accords. Critics were hammering Amazon to follow other companies and reveal its carbon footprintits contribution to the harmful gasses that were rapidly warming the globe. Its sustainability division had labored for years to create more efficient standards for its buildings and to cut down on wasteful packaging materials. But it wasnt enough to simply publicize their work and follow other companies by releasing a carbon impact report. Bezos insisted that Amazon approach the issue creatively, so that it might be viewed as a leader and its millions of customers around the world could still feel good about visiting the site and clicking the buttons labeled Buy Now.

No concrete way existed to achieve this goal, particularly in the face of Amazons growing armada of pollution-spewing airplanes, trucks, and delivery vans. Nevertheless, Bezos wanted to unveil the pledge and invite other companies to sign it with a grand gesture. One idea actively discussed inside the company was for him to announce the initiative with a video that he would personally record from one of the polar ice caps. Employees in Amazons sustainability and public relations departments actually spent a few days contemplating how to pull off that nightmarishly complex and carbon-intensive feat, until they mercifully gave up the notion. Bezos would do it in the far more accessible and warmer confines of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

On the morning of September 19, 2019, two months before the gala at the Smithsonian, a few dozen members of the press gathered for a rare audience with Amazons CEO. Bezos sat on a small stage with Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Predictions made by climate scientists just five years ago are turning out to be wrong, he began. The Antarctic ice sheets are melting 70 percent faster than predicted five years ago. Oceans are warming 40 percent faster. To help meet its new goals, he continued, Amazon would move to power its operations with 100 percent renewable energy. It would start by placing an order for one hundred thousand electric vans from the Plymouth, Michiganbased startup that Amazon had helped fund, Rivian Automotive.

In the Q&A session that followed, a reporter asked Bezos about a group of workers who had banded together under the mantle Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. They were demanding, among other things, that the company withdraw financial support for climate-denying politicians and break its cloud computing contracts with fossil fuel companies. I think its totally understandable, said Bezos of the groups concerns, while noting that he didnt agree with all of their demands. We dont want this to be the tragedy of the commons. We all have to work together on this. A few months later, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Amazon would fire two of the groups organizers.