The power in starting from scratch

One of the best post-PC, consumer products of recent time is Kindle. Ebooks were nowhere until Amazon got behind them, and it was the boneheaded simplicity of the Kindle devices and services that made it work for normal people. (Also, a great lesson in how to manage the innovator’s dilemma.)

Kindle is, however, a deeply technical product. Amazon managed to reduce the complexity to a point of appliance-like simplicity.

Another hugely successful product of Amazon’s is Amazon Web Services (AWS). T...