Amazon | My Site

Company/Innovation Culture

Every single employee is empowered to innovate
- "working backwards"
Failure is more than embraced, it's expected
- Test, fail, repeat cycle
Decisions aren't seen as irreversible
- Ok to unwind a decision and try again with a different one
Help employees more toward their passions and ideas
Nurture creativity and you'll foster innovation
- Expressions Lab (creative classes), the Spheres (botanical setting), Amazon Symphony Orchestra
Invest in tomorrow's innovators
- Future Engineer program (computer science educations for 10 million students)

Financial success: Lowest starting wage at $15/hr *double the national minimum wage*, fair pay, opportunities to own stock, 401(k) plans w/ 50% company match, paid life and accident insurance, paid shot-term and long-term disability
Employee health: Offer medical, prescription drug, dental, ad vision coverage to all full-time employees, paid time and paid holidays
Caring for families: Child and eldercare providers. Discounts on certain day care centers and free resources for children with developmental disabilities. Adoption assistance (attorney fees, court costs, and travel)
Parental leave: 20 weeks leave to birth moms and 6 weeks to adoptive parents. 6 weeks paid parental leave to a spouse/partner that doesn’t have one through their employer. Flexible and partial work hours.

Strengths
- Strong brand (rapid growth over the years)
- Moderate and expanding business diversification(offer a lot of products for electronics to retail)
- High capability for rapid technological innovation especially in online services
Weaknesses
- Imitable business model(other companies can make an e-commerce website that sells just about everything)
- Limited penetration in developing markets ((prevents the business from benefitting from the high economic growth rates of these markets)
- Limited brick-and-mortar presence (a barrier to rapidly expanding in the non-online market)
Opportunities
- Expansion in developing markets(new markets while still being large e-commerce)
- Expansion of brick-and-mortar business operations (can develop existing Amazon Go stores and other presence)
- New partnerships with other firms, especially in developing markets(can improve corporate social responsibility strategy and stakeholder management)
Threats
- Aggressive competition with online and non-online firms Walmart, Home Depot, Costco, eBay, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix as they move to e-commerce, online digital content distribution, etc)
- Cybercrime
- Imitation of business model and products