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the control frauds that were destroying Texas. At the same time that it was lobbying against the FSLIC recap, it was working on a “Report on the Texas Thrift and Real Estate Crises” (released October 30, 1987). The report explained that “entrepreneurs with backgrounds in real estate development either own or owned 20 of the 24 most deeply insolvent thrifts in Texas (with the remaining four copying the tactics of the real estate entrepreneurs)” (18). The report emphasizes that ADC loans “turned out to be veritable ticking time bombs whose subsequent explosions devastated substantial numbers of Texas thrifts” (10). Concluding that “while there was not anything necessarily wrong with this ‘grow out of it’ strategy,” it led to “frenzied growth” which “became an increasingly vicious cycle” (14, 15).
The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One
William K. Black
But it was clear that more and more companies would develop or acquire these capabilities, and they eventually would become an undifferentiated commodity. That is exactly what happened. Today, building the capability to store and retrieve millions of photos could well be a homework assignment for a college student taking a computer science class. In several of the Working Backwards documents for the early AWS products, the PR/FAQ stated that we wanted the student in a dorm room to have access to the same world-class computing infrastructure as any Amazon software engineer. That powerful metaphor in the PR/FAQ document really helped crystallize the thoughts and ideas of the AWS product development teams. There were a number of factors that influenced Amazon’s decision to start the foray into web services that would ultimately become AWS. We had several proofs of concept in the Amazon Product API and the Amazon Seller API demonstrating that the area was worthy of attention. It was simply a better way to build software than the traditional methods used at that time. There was a relatively clear roadmap on what was needed since the software building blocks were known, but hadn’t yet been offered as web services. We also knew our unique capabilities would not be unique for very long, which provided a sense of urgency. (The first company to offer a robust set of general-purpose web services wouldn’t be guaranteed to win in the long run, but the head start sure would help.) That sense of urgency is codified in Amazon’s Bias for Action leadership principle. It states, “Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk-taking.”
Working Backwards
Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
Whenever other people in my business want to rip me, they say, “Sure, the guy started with Michael Jordan, it’s not hard to train the best.” If you think it’s “not hard” to take the best and find ways to make him better, you’ve never had to face that challenge. It’s easy to improve on mediocrity, not so easy to improve on excellence.
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