Lessons from Amazon’s Early Growth Strategy

So much has been written about Amazon’s outsized growth. But Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta says it’s the company’s unusual approach to strategy that has captured his scholarly attention. In this episode, he shares how Amazon upended traditional corporate strategy by diversifying into multiple products serving many end users, instead of having a narrow focus. Gupta argues that some of Amazon’s simplest business strategies — like their obsession with customers and insistence on long-term thinking — are approaches that companies, big and small, can emulate.