You cannot make a business case that you should be who you are not

There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you're good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.

You don't want to negotiate the price of simple things you buy every day.

Many of the traits that make Amazon unusual are now deeply ingrained in the culture. In fact, if I wanted to change them, I couldn't. The cultures are self-reinforcing, and that's a good thing.

You want to look at what other companies are doing. It's very important not to be hermetically sealed. But you don't want to look at it as if, 'OK, we're going to copy that.' You want to look at it and say, 'That's very interesting. What can we be inspired to do as a result of that?' And then put your own unique twist on it.

The thing about inventing is you have to be both stubborn and flexible. The hard part is figuring out when to be which.

We're not competitor obsessed, we're customer obsessed. We start with the customer and we work backwards.