Amazon has a process that lets its team imagine big ideas. When someone at the company has one of these far-fetched ideas (“I know—let’s make a tiny tower that sits in your house and takes instructions”), they don’t start research and development, or even test-market the idea. They start by bringing the product to the press department, and they write up a release as if the product exists. It’s kind of brilliant. When it comes out, if it comes out, consumers won’t care about the nuts and bolts. They’ll care about what the product does for them, easily described, with simple metaphors—the kind
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