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Bezonomics

How Amazon Is Changing Our Lives, and What the World's Best Companies Are Learning from It

Introduction by Brian Dumaine / Read by Dan Bittner

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About The Book

Amazon is the business story of the decade. Jeff Bezos, the richest man on the planet, has built one of the most efficient wealth-creation machines in history. Like a giant squid, Amazon’s tentacles are squeezing industry after industry and, in the process, upsetting the state of technology, the economy, job creation and society at large. So pervasive is Amazon’s impact that business leaders in almost every sector need to understand how this force of nature operates and how they can respond to it.

Saying you can ignore Jeff Bezos is equivalent to saying you could ignore Henry Ford or Steve Jobs in the early years of Ford and Apple. These titans monumentally changed how we do business, redefining the rules on a global scale. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the new disruptor on the block. He has created a 21st century algorithm for business and societal disruption. He has turned the retail industry inside out, is swiftly dominating cloud computing, media and advertising, and now has his sights trained on every other domain where money changes hands and business is transacted.

But the principles by which Bezos has achieved his dominance - customer obsession, extreme innovation and long-term management, all supported by artificial intelligence turning a virtuous-cycle 'flywheel' - are now being borrowed and replicated. 'Bezonomics' is for some a goldmine, for others a threat, for still others a life-shaping force, whether they’re in business or not.

Brian Dumaine’s Bezonomics answers the fundamental question: how are Amazon and its imitators affecting the way we live, and what can we learn from them?

About The Author

Photograph by Fortune Magazine

Brian Dumaine is an award-winning journalist and a contributing editor at Fortune magazine. In addition to Bezonomics, his works include The Plot to Save the Planet, and, with three coauthors, Go Long: Why Long-Term Thinking Is Your Best Short-Term Strategy. He and his wife live in New York.

About The Reader

Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio UK (May 12, 2020)
  • Runtime: 8 hours and 59 minutes
  • ISBN13: 9781471191480

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Raves and Reviews

'Bezonomics is an easy and engaging read...Quite often, though, it is eye-opening.'

– Hugo Rifkind, The Times

'You'd think it would be easy to write a page-turner about the firm and its founder, but what makes them so successful is complicated, contradictory and controversial... What makes the book a great read, however, is the way Dumaine shines a light on the man who has made Amazon such a success. The first third of the book reveals Bezos's special sauce. He is hard-driving and ruthless.'

– John Arlidge, Sunday Times

'Highly engaging. An addictive read - one of the most compelling business books I've ever read. Meticulously researched...it never veers too far into dry details and is written engagingly.'

– Emma Newlands, Scotland on Sunday

'Brian Dumaine has written a touchstone book, significant in helping people understand some of the big underlying forces changing the world we live in. In fifty years, historians may look back at Bezonomics and point out that its choice of protagonist captured the essence of what was happening at the time - in our society, in our culture and in our economy. Dumaine is a crisp and incisive writer, able to weave big, arcing themes with vivid details and narrative stories to make his insights come to life.'

– Jim Collins, author of Good to Great

‘In America, Amazon is bigger than Jesus. One of the many arresting facts in this study of the e-retailer and the forces that drive it, by Forbes journalist Brian Dumaine, is that 51 per cent of US households attend church, but 52 per cent have an Amazon Prime membership... This is a business book, the tone readable, dry and painstakingly even-handed, though Dumaine duly includes a few of the odd quirks that tech gurus fashion into myth.'

– Nick Curtis, Evening Standard

‘Where the book really shines is in its detailed but clear exposition of how the Amazon phenomenon was built on expert data analysis, marketplace psychology and perpetual innovation – and where it is headed…Politicians and regulators have their eyes on Amazon and its profits, but will a company named after the Earth’s biggest river ever know its own limits? Bezos’s desire to expand into sectors such as healthcare, banking and even space suggests the opposite.’

– Jenny McCartney, Mail on Sunday

'How does Amazon do it all? You’ll marvel at the tech giant’s magic after reading Bezonomics.'

– David A. Vise, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of The Google Story

'If you want to know about Amazon - really know about Amazon! (and who doesn’t?) - then you have to read this book. Brian Dumaine’s deeply reported and yet accessible work takes you inside this secretive behemoth that’s rewriting the rules of business and changing the world.'

– Andy Serwer, Editor-in-Chief of Yahoo! Finance

'More than any previous book, Bezonomics reveals why "the Amazon habit" is one in which we all increasingly indulge. Dumaine spoke to many of the company’s top execs, walked the warehouse floors and listened to the fears and forecasts of competitors. The result is an insightful look at how Jeff Bezos built a trillion-dollar colossus from a theory about customer engagement.'

– Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable

'Dumaine offers a lively history of Amazon’s huge success and forecasts its effect on 21st-century business.'

– Kirkus Reviews

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