Amason started experimenting with writing narratives in two thousand four and it was a result of weekly meetings. People read faster than people talk, and you can have multi causal arguments in a narrative much better than a hierarchical power point. One thing that is a little bit misunderstood is these ideas don't come out fully formed. They start those four page memmos. Tat ended up that six page was about the right length for an hour meeting. But we did it because narratives convey about ten times as much information on e pixl density as about seven to nine times the pixldensity.
In this episode from February 2021, early Amazon execs Colin Bryar and Bill Carr -- in conversation with a16z's Sonal Chokshi -- go beyond the well-known artifacts of Amazon innovation, like the memo and the press release, and share the leadership principles, decision making practices, and operational processes that helped Amazon continue to innovate, invent new products and learn from its mistakes, as it scaled.
It’s all based on their book, Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon, drawing from the 27 years combined experience of being in the room where it happened at Amazon.