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Amid the change, one thing remains constant at Amazon: the determination to invent. Automating so much labor has freed Amazon’s corporate staff to concentrate on its invention process (they no longer have to work peak season, packing boxes). And it gives Amazonians inside the FCs the time to invent…

The robots are the most visual example of Bezos’s obsession with automating whatever he can to free his employees to work on more creative tasks. “I don’t think I can remember a time where he wasn’t interested in using computing to help us achieve our mission,” Wilke said. “From the earliest days, …

The six-pager democratizes invention within Amazon. Anyone inside the company can write one, and if they build enough traction, senior leadership will review it. “I read six-pagers that come from other parts of the company that don’t report to me,” Wilke told me. “I read six-pagers that are from pe…

There are two types of work: idea work and execution work.

Idea work is everything that goes into creating something new: dreaming up new things, figuring out how you’re going to make them, and going out and creating.

Execution work is everything that goes into supporting those things once th…