Discuss Amazons concept evaluation process as described here, and compare it to concept evaluation as discussed in this chapter, or as applied in a company you know. What is unique or different about it? What do you think Amazon needs to do to make it work successfully? Can you recommend other techniques they should be using to generate and to evaluate concepts? Do you think other companies in very Page 195different industries could learn from and use Amazons concept evaluation process (e.g., a cereal company, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, a financial service provider)? Why or why not?

CASE:

Amazon is consistently rated by Forbes as one of the Most Innovative Companies. Amazon Web Services releases over 500 innovative new products annually. How does it maintain this level of innovativeness? One clue might be the process used internally to create, and then evaluate, product concepts. Before the product is created, Amazon product developers must write a one-page press release and a six-page FAQ document for the hypothetical product. This process helps to clarify the product and its potential value to customers. The documents may be coupled with a mock-up screen display, a tangible prototype, or other visuals, if desired. The idea here is that if the developer cannot create a marketable and intriguing press release, the product probably would not succeed. Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy calls the process the working backwards approach, as it requires serious discussion of the concepts objective and value proposition at the earliest stages.

Amazon Web Services insists on clear documentation: if the engineering department happened to come across the press release, they should be able to start product development work right away. The press release and Q&A document should make it easy for Amazon product developers to determine the capabilities in which it will need to invest. Mr. Jassy and other executives receive and review over 100 e-mails of this type every year.

Once the press release gets management approval, it becomes the blueprint for developing the concept into a final product. A single-threaded leader is assigned to an approved concept, who may be the developer who created the press release or someone else identified to serve as project manager. The project manager is given full responsibility for product development, assigned full-time to the project, and removed from other projects. According to Amazon executive Dave Limp, the best way to fail at inventing something is by making it somebodys part-time job. The project manager is permitted to add team members, usually starting with a couple of technical developers.

Company founder Jeff Bezos approached Amazons CEO Worldwide Consumer Jeff Wilke with the working-backwards approach, and the latter found the idea almost too simple at first. Nevertheless, the approach gives any employee a simple procedure to create innovative ideas and introduce them to management for consideration. Amazon claims a high degree of success with this process. Mr. Wilke estimates that 50 percent of concepts generated using this approach progress through development and are launched successfully.

Discuss Amazons concept evaluation process as described here, and compare it to concept evaluation as discussed in this chapter, or as applied in a company you know. What is unique or different about it? What do you think Amazon needs to do to make it work successfully? Can you recommend other techniques they should be using to generate and to evaluate concepts? Do you think other companies in very Page 195different industries could learn from and use Amazons concept evaluation process (e.g., a cereal company, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, a financial service provider)? Why or why not?