Behemoth, Amazon Rising: Power and Seduction in the Age of Amazon

by Robin Gaster

Overview

Amazon is the most extraordinary business story of our time. In 25 years, it's become a $280 billion multi-sector giant, and within 5 years, Amazon may be the biggest company in America. Behemoth, Amazon Rising explains how Amazon built five interlocking rings logistics, Amazon Prime, the Amazon Marketplace, everyday low pricing, and constant innovation. The rings work together to create a moat too deep to scale around Amazon's retail empire.

But Amazon is not just any company. It's brilliant, agile, cold, efficient, amoral, incredibly innovative, secretive, scary, seductive. It's entirely customer-obsessed - which is great for customers, but not necessarily for producers. And there is no end to Amazon's ambitions, as it marches into logistics, cloud services, publishing, groceries and much more.

That relentless growth will test us profoundly. Behemoth describes those challenges and shows how to handle them - if we are smart, committed, and prepared to match Amazon's long-term perspective with an equally bold vision of our own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781736001202
Publisher:	Incumetrics Inc.
Publication date:	03/01/2021
Pages:	382
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Dr. Robin Gaster is president of Incumetrics Inc. (a data and program evaluation consultancy), a visiting scholar at George Washington University, and a nationally recognized expert on innovation and small business. Following a PhD from UC Berkeley and a BA from Oxford University, Gaster taught at the University of Virginia, and worked in the IMF board room. He was awarded a Congressional Fellowship. He has since developed a consulting business serving clients seeking to understand the intersection of technology, innovation, economics, and politics. Clients include thinktanks like Brookings and the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy; foreign governments (Sweden, Finland); big companies like Houghton Mifflin and Deloitte; firms with interests in specific sectors like education, publishing, and energy; and a host of smaller bespoke projects as well. His work has been published in Foreign Policy and the Atlantic, he edited a book on international telecommunications, and he has testified before Congress. In 2004, he joined a major project at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine where he was lead researcher and principal writer on a multi-volume series of reports that became the gold standard for assessing US government innovation programs for small businesses. Dr. Gaster also started a local online information service in partnership with the Electric Power Research Institute, was CEO of a small software company that made business software, and partnered with Deloitte and Touche to build a cutting edge information service covering the internet and telecoms in the mid-1990s.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1 · Introduction

Part I - Basics

Chapter 2 · Amazon and the Book Business

Chapter 3 · Prime Time: Amazon's Customer Superglue

Chapter 4 · Logistics as Leverage

Chapter 5 · Marketplace: Amazon as Platform

Appendix A. Amazon Referral Fees, July 2020

Chapter 6 · Pricing: Table Stakes in Online Retail

Chapter 7 Amazon The Innovator

Appendix A. Amazon Leadership Principles

Part II - Impacts

Chapter 8 · How Amazon Makes Its Money (and Loses Some Too)

Chapter 9 · Amazon's War on Brands

Chapter 10 · Web Services: Amazon Internet Goldmine

Chapter 11 · Amazon@Work: Blue Collar Edition

Chapter 12 · Amazon@Work: White Collar Edition

Part III - Futures

Chapter 13 · Amazon in 2031: The Power of the Double-S Curve

Chapter 14 · Stopping the Clock: How Amazon Became Unbeatable

Chapter 15 · Balancing the Behemoth