Amazon's Jeff Bezos as 'Businessperson of the Year': Can the book world learn from him?
(Read article summary)Fortune Magazine awarded Bezos the title of 'business mind of 2012.'
By and large, the book industry today is a beleaguered one, dogged by stagnant sales, bankruptcy, and failure to adapt to changing technology like self-publishing and digital books.
And yet there’s at least one shining success in the industry, a $100 billion empire built in the last couple of decades – on books. It’s an anomaly all in the book industry would do well to study, if they weren’t so busy dissing it.
That’s right, we’re talking about Amazon – and we’re not the only ones. Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos was just named Fortune Magazine’s Businessperson of the Year, and the book, tech, and business worlds are buzzing.
In its profile, Fortune calls Bezos “the ultimate disruptor: He has upended the book industry and displaced electronics merchants…. He’s willing to take risks and lose money, yet investors have embraced him, pushing Amazon’s stock up 30 percent so far this year. And even as Amazon expands and experiments, Bezos remains zealous about delivering a good customer experience. For all these reasons and more, Fortune has named Bezos its 2012 Businessperson of the Year.”
