A little over a quarter of a century ago, when online retailer Amazon started doing business, most of us knew it, if we knew it at all, as a discount bookseller. For many of us the idea of buying anything online, coupled with sending our bank details into the ether, was an alien experience. But we got used to it, and today Amazon is in the top ten list of biggest companies in the world by revenue, and its founder Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest person by a country mile.
It should follow that the man himself has plenty to say about business innovation and entrepreneurship. And so it is something of a surprise that his ‘collected writings’ – gathered together here under the title of ‘Invent & Wander’ (Harvard Business Review, £21, ISBN 9781647820718) – should amount to a slim volume of generously spaced bits and pieces. In fact, the entire anthology is made up of versions of his annual shareholder letters, speeches and interviews, from which the...