matt ridley on amazon's ability to maintain an innovative culture

During an interview with Russ Roberts on EconTalk (Matt Ridley on How Innovation Works), Matt Ridley relayed a story about how Amazon has retained its ability to innovate even as it grew. One component was what Ridley referred to as a reverse veto. Instead of an idea needing consensus or quorum from the next level up in the organization to proceed for consideration, Amazon empowered teams to proceed with any idea that received at least one vote in favor of the idea.

This of course does mean that more ideas will fail, but in an organization where there are plenty of forces encouraging safe decisions, this stands out as one way to liberate managers and allow for one person to push forward an idea as long as they can convince at least one person. More failure isn’t always bad, particularly not when you use those failures to learn.

If the organization doesn’t have this culture already set up, it can focus on changing culture, though that’s often an uphill challenge as culture is what we do when no one is telling us what to do.

Further Reading

• Permissionless Innovation by Adam Thierer