Invent and Wander The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson, reviewed

Review of Invent and Wander, The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson, see more here.

Invent & Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos
In Jeff Bezos’s own words, the core principles and philosophy that have guided him in creating, building, and leading Amazon and Blue Origin.

In this collection of Jeff Bezos’s writings—his unique and strikingly original annual shareholder letters, plus numerous speeches and interviews that provide insight into his background, his work, and the evolution of his ideas—you’ll gain an insider’s view of the why and how of his success.

Spanning a range of topics across business and public policy, from innovation and customer obsession to climate change and outer space, this book provides a rare glimpse into how Bezos thinks about the world and where the future might take us.

Written in a direct, down-to-earth style, Invent and Wander offers readers a master class in business values, strategy, and execution:

The importance of a Day 1 mindset
Why “it’s all about the long term”
What it really means to be customer obsessed
How to start new businesses and create significant organic growth in an already successful company
Why culture is an imperative
How a willingness to fail is closely connected to innovation
What the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us
Each insight offers new ways of thinking through today’s challenges—and more importantly, tomorrow’s—and the never-ending urgency of striving ahead, never resting on one’s laurels. Everyone from CEOs of the Fortune 100 to entrepreneurs just setting up shop to the millions who use Amazon’s products and services in their homes or businesses will come to understand the principles that have driven the success of one of the most important innovators of our time.

Invent and Wander The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson, reviewed

This is a good idea for a book, interesting subject matter, impressive results, and aspirations to use tech for good. However these are letters and lists and annual company statements all pulled together for this book. Each one written for a particular reason, context and time. This can then present a challenge in terms of narrative continuity across the whole book, each section opens, begins, finishes, and then, a little like Groundhog day the next one begins.

Bezos has done some interesting things for sure, and may yet end up doing some great and positive things for the planet and beyond too. This book however does not have a lot of overview or analysis. It is a collection of writings, but the sum of its works may not be a lot more than that. We are fans of Walter Isaacson too, who wrote the foreword, but as you go through the book you begin to get a sense of deja vu.

You begin to realise you have read virtually the same sentences twice, once in Isaacson’s introduction and then twice from the original source material. It feels like a compilation of lines in the introduction merely taken from the text that follows. Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs is a great read, and maybe he will produce a similar one on Bezos, but this book isn’t that biography.

The book would have benefited from a better sense of who Bezos is, beyond just compiling his writings. For massive fans this book may work, but for the general reader they may feel like they have just been given a long and carefully edited press release about the man.

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