I recently saw a quote from Jeff Bezos in which outlined a central part of his business strategy:
“I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.
“In our retail business we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,’ [or] ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.’ Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”
Similarly, in the interview with Eileen Fisher for the (highly recommended) “How I Built This” podcast, she says that she was inspired to design much simpler clothes by the Japanese kimono – a design that had lasted centuries. Over and over when she was starting out people would say, “They’re nice, but they’re so… simple.” And she’d say, “Yes, that’s the idea.”
Sometimes you don’t need to chase after the latest and greatest, or try to anticipate the next trend. Sometimes you need to just understand, and deliver, what your customers will always want.
