Invent and Wander

The beginning of the 20th century was puzzling over how the speed of light seemed to remain constant no matter how fast the observer was moving toward or away from the source. At the time, Albert Einstein was a third-class patent clerk in Switzerland who was studying devices that sent signals between different clocks in order to synchronize them. He came up with an out-of-the-box thought based on his realization that people who were in different states of motion would have different perceptions of whether the clocks were synchronized. Perhaps the speed of light is always constant, he theorized, because time itself is relative depending on one's state of motion. It took the rest of the physics community a few years to realize that his theory of relativity was right. One final trait shared by all my subjects is that they retained a childlike sense of wonder. At a certain point in life, most of us quit puzzling over everyday phenomena. Our teachers and parents, becoming impatient, tell us to stop asking so many silly questions. We might savor the beauty of a blue sky, but we no longer bother to wonder why it is that color. Leonardo did. So did Einstein, who wrote to another friend, You and I never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born. We should be careful to never outgrow our wonder years, or to let our children do so. Jeff Bezos embodies these traits. He has never outgrown his wonder years. He retains an insatiable, childlike, and joyful curiosity about almost everything. His interest in narrative and storytelling not only comes from Amazon's roots in the book-selling business, it is also a personal passion. As a kid, Bezos read dozens of science fiction novels each summer at a local library, and he now hosts an annual retreat for writers and movie makers. Likewise, although his interest in robotics and artificial intelligence was sparked because of Amazon, these fields have grown to become intellectual passions, and he now hosts another gathering each year that brings together experts interested in machine learning, automation, robotics, and space. He collects historical artifacts from great moments in science, exploration, and discovery, and he connects this love of the humanities and his passion for technology to his instinct for business. That trifecta, humanities, technology, business, is what has made him one of our era's most successful and influential innovators. Like Steve Jobs, Bezos has transformed multiple industries. Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, has changed how we shop and what we expect of shipping and deliveries. More than half of U.S. households are members of Amazon Prime, and Amazon delivered 10 billion packages in 2018, which is 2 billion more than the number of people on this planet. Amazon Web Services, AWS, provides cloud computing services and applications that enable startups and established companies to easily create new products and services just as the iPhone App Store opened whole new pathways for business. Amazon's Echo has created a new market for smart home speakers, and Amazon Studios is making hit TV shows and movies. Amazon is also poised to disrupt the health and pharmacy industries. At first, its purchase of the Whole Foods market chain was confounding, until it became apparent that the move could be a brilliant way to tie together the strands of a new Bezos business model, which involves retailing, online ordering, and super-fast delivery, combined with physical outposts. Bezos is also building a private space company, with the long-term goal of moving heavy industry to space. And he has become the owner of the Washington Post. Of course, he also has some of the infuriating traits that distinguished Steve Jobs and others. Despite his fame and influence, he has remained, behind his boisterous laugh, somewhat of an enigma. But through his life tale and writings, it is possible to get a sense of what drives him. When Jeff Bezos was a young kid, big-eared, with a booming laugh and insatiable curiosity, he spent his summers on the sprawling South Texas ranch of his maternal grandfather, Lawrence Geis, an upright but loving naval commander who had helped develop the hydrogen bomb as an assistant director of the Atomic Energy Commission. There Jeff learned self-reliance. When a bulldozer broke, he and his grandfather built a crane to lift out the gears and fix them.