Hello, this is Nakata Atsuhiko.
Let's get into the lecture right away.
Extreme Modern Society
'The era of Amazon's sole victory' episode!
In the end, we're back to Bezos.
In the end, it's Bezos.
There isn't anyone here who doesn't use Amazon, right?
When you hear, 'ding-dong!', you don't go,
'Huh? Is that a friend of mine?', right?
You go, 'Is it Amazon?', right.
As such, Amazon visits our homes daily.
There's no one here who doesn't owe Amazon anything, right?
Of course, you're all subscribed to Amazon Prime, too, right?
Because the next day delivery is such a natural thing in this day and age,
even if it isn't Amazon, even when you're shopping elsewhere,
when they say the delivery will arrive in 4, 5 days,
we get furious because it feels so late, right.
As such, Amazon is a convenient thing.
Moreover, this episode is about this, it's the 'era of sole victory With Corona'.
Everyone, did you know? They refer to Google,
Apple, Facebook and Amazon as GAFA, and even among them,
most are facing an economic depression.
Businesses whose main profit comes from ads,
like Google and Facebook, cannot help but experience a decline in sales.
Some speculate that even YouTube may have had a slight decline in sales.
Because the advertisers have asked them not to play the ads.
There have been some recent signs of recovery,
but due to the COVID pandemic, most are facing a depression.
Only Amazon was booming, actually.
175,000 people.
Apparently, they've additionally recruited 175,000 people
since the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
When, in fact, most companies would have dismissed them instead.
But they've recruited them additionally,
saying now is the perfect time to attack.
Moreover, their stock has gone up by 25%,
and the total amount of Bezos's personal assets
have grown accordingly.
To a whopping 15 trillion yen.
Bezos has a whopping 15 trillion yen.
He is the man of 15 trillion yen.
This is an incredible thing.
Where will this business, Amazon, head in the future.
And how should we live in this day and age.
This is it.
It's got nothing to do with us, you say? It's got something to do with us.
Because Amazon is no longer
just a website that sells books online
It's a company that enters the markets of all services.
It's no exaggeration to say it's already selling all sorts of products.
In other words, it's a living operation system.
It's also called the living OS.
Do you know what OS is?
It's like Windows.
Mas has iOS.
It refers to all systems.
It's making everything that encompasses our living.
It's not just Amazon, there's the Prime Video on Amazon Prime.
It's entering the video industry, too.
And music as well, if you go 'Alexa!' on Amazon Echo–
Oh, I'm sure Alexa has just responded to my voice at some of your homes.
Sorry, she'd have responded with, 'What is it?'
I may have gotten some comments telling me not to say
'Okay, Google' or 'Hey, Siri'.
Everyone's probably in chaos right now, going 'What's this? What's going on?'…
When they say 'What is it?', if you go, 'I didn't call for you!',
they apologize right away.
It's the game my daughter's into these days.
Going, 'You don't need to apologize!'
As such, Amazon Echo's Alexa,
or Amazon Web Services, the cloud service.
As for this Amazon cloud service,
so, they aren't merely providing cloud services
for other large businesses like Airbnb or Netflix.
They are also providing them for the United States Department of Defense or CIA.
Everyone's using it, the large businesses and the nations are using it, too.
At home, there's Alexa,
and you can use the video and the music services on Prime,
and you can even buy things.
It's everything.
Moreover, what they're aiming to do with Alexa
is smart home appliances.
They're working to control everything, like the light bulbs, with Alexa.
Everything is being operated within Amazon,
and some say that the competitors are gradually being swallowed by Amazon.
Now bookstores aren't the only ones giving up
at the emergence of Amazon.
Retailers aren't the only ones, either.
Various genres, the music services or the video services.
Then, the radio or the television broadcasting stations.
Music? Record companies.
This would have something to do with us, then, right?
When the cloud is in action, it becomes everybody's concern.
How should we live within that.
If we don't think about this, the businesses
in the next generation cannot grow.
The businesses will be split up.
This book is what tells us about that.
The book is called 'Bezonomics: How Amazon Is Changing Our Lives
and What the World's Best Companies Are Learning from It'.
You've all heard of the term Abenomics, right?
Abenomics was coined by combining the Prime Minister Abe
and the word economics.
This word originally began with President Reagan's Reaganomics.
People have dubbed it the Abenomics, after how people
used the term Reaganomics to signify
that he was a politician who had a great influence on the economy.
He was pledging to put that much into the economy, as such.
Just like that,
we're referring to how Bezos's ways have a huge influence
on the economy as Bezonomics.
This book is currently selling very well in the USA,
and a great number of it is on display at the bookstores in Japan, too.
The Amazonization in the future, and the hacks to survive
in the era of Amazon's sole victory.
Whether you're an individual, or a worker,
or someone choosing a company, or someone running a company,
it's got to do with all of you, it's very interesting.
Because, whether to follow in the footsteps of Amazon,
or to take other measures, since that'd be too hard.
The humankind only has these two options left now.
There are no other ways anymore.
Either become like Amazon, or strive hard in an area
that Amazon isn't reaching out to.
So these two are the only measures left.
Being able to follow in the footsteps of Amazon means
it's an incredible business.
The businesses announcing
that they will become like Amazon, there's Uber, for instance.
Uber has stated that it wishes to become the Amazon
of the delivery or commute, the transportation service.
Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs, which is famous in the finance industry,
has stated that it wishes to become the Amazon of the finance industry.
As such, the famous businesses are stating
that they wish to become like Amazon,
to build a system like Amazon.
What does this mean?
This, in short,
is the strongest business model that merges AI and data.
I will explain this later on.
AI.
Some of you may not be quite sure what it is.
But it's gradually progressing.
And big data.
It sounds like they're collecting an enormous amount of data, right?
These two things.
Through merging these two effectively,
we must first recognize that it's a technology company
that has no rival, that no one can catch up to now.
It's not a bookstore.
It's a super technology company that just used to sell books at first.
The key to that technology is AI and big data.
Yes, this is something we hear about often these days.
They say that, now, the business known
as 'the Amazon of the 〇〇 industry' will win in each industry.
That's why Uber and Goldman Sachs are following in their footsteps, too.
Then, those who cannot do so.
That's all of us.
Is any of you planning to conquer the world with AI and big data?
It's hard, right, AI, it'd take a desperate attempt just to implement it.
We can't even begin to imagine which businesses we must use
until we reach a place where we can gather big data, right.
The US and the Chinese businesses
called the platformers have already dominated most of the market.
What kinds of measures should we take within that.
We must think about these things, too.
Then both of these two are…
By chance, it could be that an incredible super businessperson
is watching this video.
Anyway, whichever way you go,
you cannot survive without understanding Bezonomics,
this system created
by Amazon that has conquered the world,
and what it's planning to do in the future.
This book tells us that, without understanding
the great genius who has shaken the great world of the 21st century,
Bezos, the man of 15 trillion yen, we cannot survive
until the coming of the next generation.
How interesting.
We cannot survive until the next generation
without knowing about Bezos,
so we must understand Bezos.
In understanding Bezos,
there's a diagram we must make sure to understand.
Don't just say no, I'd like you
to first try and remember this one diagram.
This diagram gets shared to all employees of Amazon,
and it's referred to as the diagram you must understand at all cost.
They say Bezos first explained this diagram
by quickly sketching it on a paper napkin from a cafe.
That model is this.
[Growth / selection, customer experience, access traffic, retailers]
It's rotating in a circle.
Growth is written in the center.
During the process towards growth,
you must build an AI fly wheel.
Yes, everyone's in panic mode.
Like they're wondering what this is…
The, uh…
Those saying that all you got from this was the wheel.
You can relax.
You can understand this if you just know that it's a wheel.
A wheel is on a bike, or on a motorcycle tyre.
It's at the center of a tyre, the wheel.
A wheel is something like a car's tyre.
Then what's a fly wheel?
The state where the wheel keeps circling on and on.
We also call it the flywheel effect.
When you first roll the car wheel,
it'd be heavy at first, since you're rolling the wheel
of a car that is immobile.
But as you gain power, it becomes easy to roll it.
You've probably experienced this phenomenon, too.
A bicycle wheel is also heavy at first, but it rolls easily
as you keep going, right.
You call this state the fly wheel.
I'd like you to first understand this concept of the fly wheel.
First, producing a product at a low cost.
Selling a good product at a low price.
This is the important part, with selling a product.
Contrarily, they call selling a bad product at a high price a scam.
It makes you think, just what are they trying to do.
We must sell a good product at a cheap price.
Just as how selling delicious bread at a price anyone can afford
makes your bakery a popular one.
Alright, so you make your products at a low cost, now,
to sell them at a low price, it'd be best
for the unit product cost to also be low, right.
Therefore, you could cut down on the labor cost,
or another cost to reduce the cost of production
and produce them at a low cost.
For instance, there are some restaurants that can get fresh vegetables
at a low cost because their parents own a farm.
I've seen a restaurant owner who has said
I've seen a restaurant owner who has said
they can sell their dishes at a low price
as they can get the vegetables at a low cost.
This is another example of cost reduction.
Since they're skipping the distribution stages
and purchasing through direct sales.
If you can produce at a low cost, you can sell at a low price
and if you can sell at a low price,
the customers who bought at a low price will be satisfied
with the 'customer experience'.
When the customers' satisfaction goes up, the number
of customers increase, the access rate increases.
When the number of customers increase,
this platform called Amazon is a website that sells things, right.
When there's a lot of customers, people who want to sell their products
will come to use this platform.
Websites like Amazon– let's say I've created one.
No matter how much I ask people to use our platform,
if it's a website that only about 5~6 people use,
you'd think it's pointless, no matter how cheap you sell your products.
As they've detained a lot of customers,
the retailers would gather as it looks like their products would sell well.
Due to the gathering of the retailers,
various options will be created.
For instance, when you look up socks on Amazon,
you get a tremendous amount of results, right?
The– I'm not too sure, but
when you look up cameras, you get over tens of thousands of results, right.
You get thousands, and tens of thousands of results.
The customer experience will be improved through this again.
When this happens, the number of customer goes up again,
and so does the number of retailers
and when there are more retailers, you gradually get this positive circulation.
Therefore, fly wheel signifies this 'positive circulation'.
So you create this cycle as you do the sales.
Then you'd make profit, right.
When you make profit, you use this for price reduction.
You could reduce the price by hiring engineers
to circulate the system more effectively,
or you could reduce the price by reducing the product unit cost
through investing in facilities.
It's the basics of product sales.
The basics of the basics of product sales.
You must understand that it's this circulation structure for these things.
Why is this a good circulation structure, then?
It's a circulation structure for the slogan
of always prioritizing the customers.
At first, you'd make profit, when the circulation takes place
and you make profit,
if you go 'Yay!' and place it in your pocket, the circulation will be disrupted.
If you use the profit you make for price reduction,
you can provide better service, so it keeps circulating.
Amazon is continuing to expand,
and it's becoming easier and easier to find products.
They're striving to reach out to their customers effectively.
They always prioritize the customers.
The mistake that everyone makes here is that they look at the competitors.
A great number of companies end up looking at their competitors.
I've felt this, too, back when I was a comedian.
My job was to make the audience laugh.
All I had to do was make the audience laugh,
but there was a time when I envied the others, thinking 'Those duos…'.
It's completely pointless, but I went, 'What's up with him? Is he even funny?'…
When hating on others is completely pointless.
Next, the employees, this part's got Bezos written all over it.
Bezos is very kind to his customers.
But he is very strict to his employees.
He really is very strict.
He is very macho.
Always prioritizing the customers.
Bezos is the man who pushed his rivals and his employees back in line
and achieved quick growth by rotating this circulation structure
at a high speed to become 'the man of 15 trillion yen'.
In the middle of that, AI has been implemented.
This is innovation.
This book writes that he is the first man in the 21st century
who had implemented AI to the fly wheel, the basics of product sales,
and brought about a huge success.
What kinds of changes could have occurred due to AI?
You'd gain an enormous amount of customer data.
It's now become a given, but you get all those recommended products
on Amazon, right.
Amazon was the first to implement that.
Now, other websites like Netflix have implemented this, too.
The system that gives customized recommendations
by obtaining other people's search data, or the data
regarding other people's hobbies and preferences.
Amazon was the first to execute that.
Amazon was able to do research on the preferences
of the majority of people who have bought this particular book
and provide customized recommendations.
Among the online sales websites, I mean.
While selling these campaigns,
they've gradually implemented AI to this part
so that the computer can predict what kinds of things
this person buys through automatic learning
and go, 'This sells well, you need this, right?'
As it tells people that others like them are buying this and that,
the customer experience keeps getting improved,
and the more you buy, the closer you get to the products you want.
This high-speed rotation cycle that has now become a given
is called the greatest system developed by Bezos.
I'd like you to keep this in your minds.
The reason people say a business that deals with AI and big data
can conquer the world
is because they accelerate this high-speed rotation.
The more people buy, the more data gets collected
so they can get closer and closer to the products they want.
I wonder which products are on your recommended product list?
You don't want people to see it, right?
Because it would reveal all the things you usually buy.
Sometimes, those who don't know much about these things
would post on Twitter, 'What, I'm scared!
Has it popped up on the ad? How chilling!'
No, it's just been personalized.
It's popped up because you've looked up similar things.
You've all experienced thinking, 'Why would you say that?', right?
Bezos knows us like the back of his hand.
Don't ever post something like that anywhere.
They post, 'Why would I buy this!', but it's recommending it to you
because it seems likely that you'd buy it.
You're getting these recommendations because you're buying
those kinds of things, you fool!
This is the fly wheel rotating at a high speed.
Then how has Bezos managed to come all this way?
What kind of a person is he?
I think it'd be very good to understand these things, too.
We could say that Bezos is a man
with a very clear division between light and dark.
It's very contradictory.
Among they things I've mentioned earlier, too,
an entrepreneur who always prioritizes the customers,
he sounds very kind, right.
It feels like he'd know all about people's minds, right.
Since he wouldn't have implemented
the next day delivery system on Amazon Prime
had he not known well about people's minds.
So he'd really know the people's minds inside out, right.
Because, through implementing next day delivery in his business,
he must have known what would happen in the future.
When next day delivery becomes the norm,
he understood that everyone would come to hate the businesses
that take over 3 days to delivery their goods.
They'd go, 'What's this? Aren't they doing their jobs?'
and they'll think, 'I should have bought from Amazon'.
He knew this, so he implemented it.
But, in other words, to the employees and the competitors,
this would appear as a devilish behavior.
The work environment of the employees are very often criticized,
and the same goes for the issue of competitors.
Acquisitions.
What if they don't agree to the acquisition?
If they don't agree, he'll tell them that he'll sell
the products they're selling for free.
That's how brutal he can be.
He knows that if Amazon starts selling their product for free
to have a head-to-head match, his business would win
so he's telling them he'll crush their company.
Is he the devil?
Or is he an angel.
To describe Bezos in one phrase, he's 'the man of improvisation'.
It's not a contradiction, he's 'the man of improvisation'.
It's what people may call this person when evaluating him.
We can see his skills at improvising
when we look at his work experiences.
He was originally in the finance industry, you see.
He had quite a high status in the finance industry, too.
Various things had happened while he was growing up.
He had quite a complicated background growing up,
but he had entered the finance industry after that, and had quite a high status.
However,
Bezos really likes data,
so while he was researching data,
he had to look into which companies were growing in the finance industry,
so while he was looking up, he noticed that the internet
would be growing explosively.
He knew he had to do a business through the internet.
That he had to move online in an adequate way.
Back then, the US finance industry was in the limelight.
Bezos was an elite member, with a promising future at the company
but despite that, he goes to his superior and says this.
'I'd like to try online sales.'
His superior tried to stop him. 'It's not a bad idea.'
'Knowing you, you might be able to succeed.'
'But it'd only be a good idea if you weren't in the position
you are in right now.'
'As long as you've got this status at this company, it's not a good idea.'
'I think you'd benefit more from staying in this company.'
But Bezos threw it all away and left.
He left his company and started online sales.
But this was the beginning of the legendary tale.
This improvisation that has changed his situation.
He never gets restricted by the organization,
or what he had been doing until then.
If it works, he keeps trying, and if it doesn't work, he stops.
That's how he works.
And 'fact over solidarity'.
It's quite a difficult expression.
He values data over teamwork.
This is his devilish side.
At a regular company, the competent ones
would get to speak first during a meeting.
There'd be an order and a rank, after all.
But Bezos did not agree to this.
Regardless of your power, you must show the data,
and if the data is correct, it's fine.
If the data isn't correct, if there's an error or a contraction, it's useless.
Those who quit state that this meeting is very challenging.
Some people even say they had quit because the meetings were so hard.
Because this meeting always entailed the exchange of criticisms.
They exchange criticisms, confronting each other's job.
If the quality of the data isn't good, or if the data
they've prepared hasn't been organized,
they say this brings about very harsh criticisms.
So there's that side.
This meeting, I'll be telling you about it later on,
should I just explain it first and then move on?
6-page memos.
It's the famous meeting style exclusive to Amazon.
It's the famous meeting style exclusive to Amazon.
Everyone, have you ever heard of this?
Apparently, they don't let you use PowerPoint at Amazon.
When you do a presentation using PowerPoint,
the degree of delivery varies depending on the condition
of the presentation, right?
This method of delivery doesn't leave any data, you see.
So don't rely on PowerPoint slides.
Deliver using paper instead.
Let's make it so we can delivery everything on paper.
This means that trying to wing it at the meeting
with some amount of data would not work.
And the number of pages has also been set, to 6.
Why is this? This is the interesting part.
It takes the same form as when you're releasing something new
in the media, stating you'll develop such and such service or product.
So, is your plan the same quality it will be when you present
this product or service to the world?
This is where the idea came from.
The… uh… the…
dumpling…
dumplings, if you said 'I think pink dumplings would sell well!',
they'd criticize your idea, saying it is poor.
You can only participate in the meetings if you densely document
in 6 whole pages
why you need to paint these dumplings in pink and sell them.
At the meetings, they distribute the 6-page data to everyone
and give everyone 20 minutes to read it.
So they won't forgive anyone who speaks without understanding the data.
The person creating the data must organize everything into 6 pages,
and those participating in the meeting must understand those 6 pages
within 20 minutes.
And they must make sure to understand it before they can speak.
So the one creating the data and those participating in the meeting
must all be thorough.
Fact over solidarity.
Prioritizing data.
Despite the fact that this is very effcient,
it shows that they value speed very much.
It's speed and fact.
There aren't any elements like feelings here, right?
There's no room for consideration.
Speed and fact.
And the third factor is
the very long term vision, this is the incredible part.
It's the super long shot.
What makes this interesting is,
most entrepreneurs can only think about
what happens in the next 4 quarters, or the next few months.
The same goes for you, right?
What happens this year, the furthest we'd look is still within this year.
We make plans for what we do this year,
but we can't predict what would happen next year,
so we don't come to think about next year, or the year after that, right.
Since we don't know what may happen.
But he's been quoted as saying that those who think about the next 2, 3 months–
no, the next 2, 3 years can only achieve work within that scale.
Because, a great undertaking cannot be achieved in 2~3 years.
This is certain, right?
Even if it's me, Bezos,
I'm Bezos right now.
Even if I'm Bezos, if I had to achieve something within 2~3 years,
what I can do will be limited.
But when I am told that I can take 7 years, a lot of ideas come to mind.
Something would definitely get started from there.
I believe that this may be the greatest reason
why Bezos has achieved success.
If you can't understand that he is someone
with this very long term vision,
we can only understand that he is a very logical and speedy person.
Then, we may think he's a genius with no human emotions,
but I think the true stance is that Bezos has the ability to think about things
in very long term.
So he has this incredible stance of having a super long term vision,
he's very capable.
Normally, people only look 2~3 years ahead,
but he is someone with the ability to consider the next decades.
The service this has created is AWS, the Amazon Web Service.
Actually, the Amazon Web Service
is a service that couldn't even have been conceived
had it not been done in very long term.
An internet business creating a cloud service, you say?
A considerable number of facility investors have once questioned
when it'd be possible to get a return.
This was actually in 2001, which is known
as the dot-com bubble (Internet Bubble).
In other words, IT businesses were in boom,
but there already were a great number of similar businesses.
This is similar to comedy.
They rose with a roar, but most of them were mediocre entertainers
with nothing special, right?
It's true, no, I don't mean it's true,
that's not it.
There were a great number of them, there were so many
due to the comedy boom, right.
All sorts of people came out, right.
But 90% of them disappear, this is what a boom is.
This is what a boom is.
Everyone enthused over it, thinking all comedy is great,
but only very few survive.
There are very few entertainers who can stay active for over 10, 15 years.
The same goes for IT businesses.
It was only very briefly hat people invested in them,
going 'An IT business, yay!'
In the end, only the skilled businesses can survive.
When the dot-com bubble had burst with a pop.
The next few years after that were desperate.
It was said that the profit wasn't increasing.
Since they kept just circulating this, and then investing
all the profit in the facilities.
When asked about what was going on, as the profit wasn't increasing at all,
the reason he was able
to say, 'It's a cloud' was because he had this very long term vision.
Moreover, Blue Origin, this is the incredible part.
It's whether or not we're really understanding
what Bezos's ultimate goal is.
This Blue Origin is in the space industry.
Sending out a rocket to take humans to the space.
Elon Musk of Tesla is also running a space business,
and Takafumi Horie is also running a space business,
so you might be thinking, 'Everyone in the IT industry must love the space,
wow, what romanticists!'
That's not it.
Bezos is planning to head to space with a very clear vision.
Why is this?
Surely, the speed of growth for the humankind
will cause this planet's environment to reach its limit.
I've recently made a video on this, like the lesson on climate change.
About the increased population,
or about what makes the economy go around.
It places a lot of burden on the environment.
This means the humankind cannot survive on Earth alone.
After thinking clearly about these things,
he'd send people
into space, and then, in there,
so, in other words, this is the space version of the Age of Discovery.
His vision is to create a colony in space to split up the industry
between there and the land.
The Heavy and Chemical Industry, the heavy industry,
and the steel or the mechanical industry to space.
There are various things in space, the materials are widely varied.
It's about developing those things in space.
Contrarily, they'd use the Earth as the location for residence
and the light industry.
So the humankind can progress further when we divide the areas
at a spatial level.
He is developing the space with these objectives.
With AWS, he was looking decades ahead.
With Blue Origin, he's looking centuries ahead.
The very long term vision that lets him conceive these ideas
is very interesting, huh?
It's very interesting how everything Bezos does
over a long time span turns out later in time.
Apparently, Bezos has recruited the CEO of the media company MTV,
so, he has recruited the CEO of a large company in the media broadcasting industry
and gave her a directorial position.
Why has he done that?
And so, Prime Video and Music were founded.
And, on another directorial position,
he has hired the counsel of the Department of Defense.
Why has he done that?
And so, AWS was recruited by the Department of Defense.
As such, even with allocating the directors,
he looked quite far ahead and identified the human resources
he needed to reach out in these areas.
Had he thought, 'I need profit right now,
I want to sell something right now',
he'd have created a formation where he could make the most money
with the human resources he had at the time.
But it wasn't about right now.
Bezos is someone who can use the method of allocating human resources
to achieve a certain objective decades later, it's so interesting.
Speed, logic and long term.
So he fuses these three skills to teach his employees thoroughly
about the AI fly wheel.
That you must never stop this circulation.
Therefore, what Amazon is doing
is saying you must never stop the circulation
with the sole objective of building the basis
and raising profit through this to ultimately send out Blue Origin,
to send the humankind out to space.
It's an incredible power.
And that's why his actions are full of contradiction at times.
Hey, isn't Bezos someone like this? Oh, he's not.
Then isn't he someone like this? No, he's not.
Then just what is he trying to do?
I see, he wanted to do those things that'll become clear later in time!
This is the man who has reached 15 trillion yen.
[Next episode – predicting Jeff Bezos's future]
So fresh food, music, entertainment, home appliances.
And transportation, data, cloud, everything.
Moreover, wouldn't he target ads, pharmaceutics,
bank and insurance next?
They're merely yet to be discovered by Bezos.
When Bezos locks on, don't try and run away.
Online community, PROGRESS.
[Nakata Atsuhiko's online salon, PROGRESS, 3,700 members, 980 yen/month]
[Watch YouTube University]
[Introduction (self-introduction of the members)]
[Theater (uploading the members' videos)]
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People can be anything, starting from whenever.
You're next.
Let's get into the lecture right away.
Extreme Modern Society
'The era of Amazon's sole victory' episode!
In the end, we're back to Bezos.
In the end, it's Bezos.
There isn't anyone here who doesn't use Amazon, right?
When you hear, 'ding-dong!', you don't go,
'Huh? Is that a friend of mine?', right?
You go, 'Is it Amazon?', right.
As such, Amazon visits our homes daily.
There's no one here who doesn't owe Amazon anything, right?
Of course, you're all subscribed to Amazon Prime, too, right?
Because the next day delivery is such a natural thing in this day and age,
even if it isn't Amazon, even when you're shopping elsewhere,
when they say the delivery will arrive in 4, 5 days,
we get furious because it feels so late, right.
As such, Amazon is a convenient thing.
Moreover, this episode is about this, it's the 'era of sole victory With Corona'.
Everyone, did you know? They refer to Google,
Apple, Facebook and Amazon as GAFA, and even among them,
most are facing an economic depression.
Businesses whose main profit comes from ads,
like Google and Facebook, cannot help but experience a decline in sales.
Some speculate that even YouTube may have had a slight decline in sales.
Because the advertisers have asked them not to play the ads.
There have been some recent signs of recovery,
but due to the COVID pandemic, most are facing a depression.
Only Amazon was booming, actually.
175,000 people.
Apparently, they've additionally recruited 175,000 people
since the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
When, in fact, most companies would have dismissed them instead.
But they've recruited them additionally,
saying now is the perfect time to attack.
Moreover, their stock has gone up by 25%,
and the total amount of Bezos's personal assets
have grown accordingly.
To a whopping 15 trillion yen.
Bezos has a whopping 15 trillion yen.
He is the man of 15 trillion yen.
This is an incredible thing.
Where will this business, Amazon, head in the future.
And how should we live in this day and age.
This is it.
It's got nothing to do with us, you say? It's got something to do with us.
Because Amazon is no longer
just a website that sells books online
It's a company that enters the markets of all services.
It's no exaggeration to say it's already selling all sorts of products.
In other words, it's a living operation system.
It's also called the living OS.
Do you know what OS is?
It's like Windows.
Mas has iOS.
It refers to all systems.
It's making everything that encompasses our living.
It's not just Amazon, there's the Prime Video on Amazon Prime.
It's entering the video industry, too.
And music as well, if you go 'Alexa!' on Amazon Echo–
Oh, I'm sure Alexa has just responded to my voice at some of your homes.
Sorry, she'd have responded with, 'What is it?'
I may have gotten some comments telling me not to say
'Okay, Google' or 'Hey, Siri'.
Everyone's probably in chaos right now, going 'What's this? What's going on?'…
When they say 'What is it?', if you go, 'I didn't call for you!',
they apologize right away.
It's the game my daughter's into these days.
Going, 'You don't need to apologize!'
As such, Amazon Echo's Alexa,
or Amazon Web Services, the cloud service.
As for this Amazon cloud service,
so, they aren't merely providing cloud services
for other large businesses like Airbnb or Netflix.
They are also providing them for the United States Department of Defense or CIA.
Everyone's using it, the large businesses and the nations are using it, too.
At home, there's Alexa,
and you can use the video and the music services on Prime,
and you can even buy things.
It's everything.
Moreover, what they're aiming to do with Alexa
is smart home appliances.
They're working to control everything, like the light bulbs, with Alexa.
Everything is being operated within Amazon,
and some say that the competitors are gradually being swallowed by Amazon.
Now bookstores aren't the only ones giving up
at the emergence of Amazon.
Retailers aren't the only ones, either.
Various genres, the music services or the video services.
Then, the radio or the television broadcasting stations.
Music? Record companies.
This would have something to do with us, then, right?
When the cloud is in action, it becomes everybody's concern.
How should we live within that.
If we don't think about this, the businesses
in the next generation cannot grow.
The businesses will be split up.
This book is what tells us about that.
The book is called 'Bezonomics: How Amazon Is Changing Our Lives
and What the World's Best Companies Are Learning from It'.
You've all heard of the term Abenomics, right?
Abenomics was coined by combining the Prime Minister Abe
and the word economics.
This word originally began with President Reagan's Reaganomics.
People have dubbed it the Abenomics, after how people
used the term Reaganomics to signify
that he was a politician who had a great influence on the economy.
He was pledging to put that much into the economy, as such.
Just like that,
we're referring to how Bezos's ways have a huge influence
on the economy as Bezonomics.
This book is currently selling very well in the USA,
and a great number of it is on display at the bookstores in Japan, too.
The Amazonization in the future, and the hacks to survive
in the era of Amazon's sole victory.
Whether you're an individual, or a worker,
or someone choosing a company, or someone running a company,
it's got to do with all of you, it's very interesting.
Because, whether to follow in the footsteps of Amazon,
or to take other measures, since that'd be too hard.
The humankind only has these two options left now.
There are no other ways anymore.
Either become like Amazon, or strive hard in an area
that Amazon isn't reaching out to.
So these two are the only measures left.
Being able to follow in the footsteps of Amazon means
it's an incredible business.
The businesses announcing
that they will become like Amazon, there's Uber, for instance.
Uber has stated that it wishes to become the Amazon
of the delivery or commute, the transportation service.
Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs, which is famous in the finance industry,
has stated that it wishes to become the Amazon of the finance industry.
As such, the famous businesses are stating
that they wish to become like Amazon,
to build a system like Amazon.
What does this mean?
This, in short,
is the strongest business model that merges AI and data.
I will explain this later on.
AI.
Some of you may not be quite sure what it is.
But it's gradually progressing.
And big data.
It sounds like they're collecting an enormous amount of data, right?
These two things.
Through merging these two effectively,
we must first recognize that it's a technology company
that has no rival, that no one can catch up to now.
It's not a bookstore.
It's a super technology company that just used to sell books at first.
The key to that technology is AI and big data.
Yes, this is something we hear about often these days.
They say that, now, the business known
as 'the Amazon of the 〇〇 industry' will win in each industry.
That's why Uber and Goldman Sachs are following in their footsteps, too.
Then, those who cannot do so.
That's all of us.
Is any of you planning to conquer the world with AI and big data?
It's hard, right, AI, it'd take a desperate attempt just to implement it.
We can't even begin to imagine which businesses we must use
until we reach a place where we can gather big data, right.
The US and the Chinese businesses
called the platformers have already dominated most of the market.
What kinds of measures should we take within that.
We must think about these things, too.
Then both of these two are…
By chance, it could be that an incredible super businessperson
is watching this video.
Anyway, whichever way you go,
you cannot survive without understanding Bezonomics,
this system created
by Amazon that has conquered the world,
and what it's planning to do in the future.
This book tells us that, without understanding
the great genius who has shaken the great world of the 21st century,
Bezos, the man of 15 trillion yen, we cannot survive
until the coming of the next generation.
How interesting.
We cannot survive until the next generation
without knowing about Bezos,
so we must understand Bezos.
In understanding Bezos,
there's a diagram we must make sure to understand.
Don't just say no, I'd like you
to first try and remember this one diagram.
This diagram gets shared to all employees of Amazon,
and it's referred to as the diagram you must understand at all cost.
They say Bezos first explained this diagram
by quickly sketching it on a paper napkin from a cafe.
That model is this.
[Growth / selection, customer experience, access traffic, retailers]
It's rotating in a circle.
Growth is written in the center.
During the process towards growth,
you must build an AI fly wheel.
Yes, everyone's in panic mode.
Like they're wondering what this is…
The, uh…
Those saying that all you got from this was the wheel.
You can relax.
You can understand this if you just know that it's a wheel.
A wheel is on a bike, or on a motorcycle tyre.
It's at the center of a tyre, the wheel.
A wheel is something like a car's tyre.
Then what's a fly wheel?
The state where the wheel keeps circling on and on.
We also call it the flywheel effect.
When you first roll the car wheel,
it'd be heavy at first, since you're rolling the wheel
of a car that is immobile.
But as you gain power, it becomes easy to roll it.
You've probably experienced this phenomenon, too.
A bicycle wheel is also heavy at first, but it rolls easily
as you keep going, right.
You call this state the fly wheel.
I'd like you to first understand this concept of the fly wheel.
First, producing a product at a low cost.
Selling a good product at a low price.
This is the important part, with selling a product.
Contrarily, they call selling a bad product at a high price a scam.
It makes you think, just what are they trying to do.
We must sell a good product at a cheap price.
Just as how selling delicious bread at a price anyone can afford
makes your bakery a popular one.
Alright, so you make your products at a low cost, now,
to sell them at a low price, it'd be best
for the unit product cost to also be low, right.
Therefore, you could cut down on the labor cost,
or another cost to reduce the cost of production
and produce them at a low cost.
For instance, there are some restaurants that can get fresh vegetables
at a low cost because their parents own a farm.
I've seen a restaurant owner who has said
I've seen a restaurant owner who has said
they can sell their dishes at a low price
as they can get the vegetables at a low cost.
This is another example of cost reduction.
Since they're skipping the distribution stages
and purchasing through direct sales.
If you can produce at a low cost, you can sell at a low price
and if you can sell at a low price,
the customers who bought at a low price will be satisfied
with the 'customer experience'.
When the customers' satisfaction goes up, the number
of customers increase, the access rate increases.
When the number of customers increase,
this platform called Amazon is a website that sells things, right.
When there's a lot of customers, people who want to sell their products
will come to use this platform.
Websites like Amazon– let's say I've created one.
No matter how much I ask people to use our platform,
if it's a website that only about 5~6 people use,
you'd think it's pointless, no matter how cheap you sell your products.
As they've detained a lot of customers,
the retailers would gather as it looks like their products would sell well.
Due to the gathering of the retailers,
various options will be created.
For instance, when you look up socks on Amazon,
you get a tremendous amount of results, right?
The– I'm not too sure, but
when you look up cameras, you get over tens of thousands of results, right.
You get thousands, and tens of thousands of results.
The customer experience will be improved through this again.
When this happens, the number of customer goes up again,
and so does the number of retailers
and when there are more retailers, you gradually get this positive circulation.
Therefore, fly wheel signifies this 'positive circulation'.
So you create this cycle as you do the sales.
Then you'd make profit, right.
When you make profit, you use this for price reduction.
You could reduce the price by hiring engineers
to circulate the system more effectively,
or you could reduce the price by reducing the product unit cost
through investing in facilities.
It's the basics of product sales.
The basics of the basics of product sales.
You must understand that it's this circulation structure for these things.
Why is this a good circulation structure, then?
It's a circulation structure for the slogan
of always prioritizing the customers.
At first, you'd make profit, when the circulation takes place
and you make profit,
if you go 'Yay!' and place it in your pocket, the circulation will be disrupted.
If you use the profit you make for price reduction,
you can provide better service, so it keeps circulating.
Amazon is continuing to expand,
and it's becoming easier and easier to find products.
They're striving to reach out to their customers effectively.
They always prioritize the customers.
The mistake that everyone makes here is that they look at the competitors.
A great number of companies end up looking at their competitors.
I've felt this, too, back when I was a comedian.
My job was to make the audience laugh.
All I had to do was make the audience laugh,
but there was a time when I envied the others, thinking 'Those duos…'.
It's completely pointless, but I went, 'What's up with him? Is he even funny?'…
When hating on others is completely pointless.
Next, the employees, this part's got Bezos written all over it.
Bezos is very kind to his customers.
But he is very strict to his employees.
He really is very strict.
He is very macho.
Always prioritizing the customers.
Bezos is the man who pushed his rivals and his employees back in line
and achieved quick growth by rotating this circulation structure
at a high speed to become 'the man of 15 trillion yen'.
In the middle of that, AI has been implemented.
This is innovation.
This book writes that he is the first man in the 21st century
who had implemented AI to the fly wheel, the basics of product sales,
and brought about a huge success.
What kinds of changes could have occurred due to AI?
You'd gain an enormous amount of customer data.
It's now become a given, but you get all those recommended products
on Amazon, right.
Amazon was the first to implement that.
Now, other websites like Netflix have implemented this, too.
The system that gives customized recommendations
by obtaining other people's search data, or the data
regarding other people's hobbies and preferences.
Amazon was the first to execute that.
Amazon was able to do research on the preferences
of the majority of people who have bought this particular book
and provide customized recommendations.
Among the online sales websites, I mean.
While selling these campaigns,
they've gradually implemented AI to this part
so that the computer can predict what kinds of things
this person buys through automatic learning
and go, 'This sells well, you need this, right?'
As it tells people that others like them are buying this and that,
the customer experience keeps getting improved,
and the more you buy, the closer you get to the products you want.
This high-speed rotation cycle that has now become a given
is called the greatest system developed by Bezos.
I'd like you to keep this in your minds.
The reason people say a business that deals with AI and big data
can conquer the world
is because they accelerate this high-speed rotation.
The more people buy, the more data gets collected
so they can get closer and closer to the products they want.
I wonder which products are on your recommended product list?
You don't want people to see it, right?
Because it would reveal all the things you usually buy.
Sometimes, those who don't know much about these things
would post on Twitter, 'What, I'm scared!
Has it popped up on the ad? How chilling!'
No, it's just been personalized.
It's popped up because you've looked up similar things.
You've all experienced thinking, 'Why would you say that?', right?
Bezos knows us like the back of his hand.
Don't ever post something like that anywhere.
They post, 'Why would I buy this!', but it's recommending it to you
because it seems likely that you'd buy it.
You're getting these recommendations because you're buying
those kinds of things, you fool!
This is the fly wheel rotating at a high speed.
Then how has Bezos managed to come all this way?
What kind of a person is he?
I think it'd be very good to understand these things, too.
We could say that Bezos is a man
with a very clear division between light and dark.
It's very contradictory.
Among they things I've mentioned earlier, too,
an entrepreneur who always prioritizes the customers,
he sounds very kind, right.
It feels like he'd know all about people's minds, right.
Since he wouldn't have implemented
the next day delivery system on Amazon Prime
had he not known well about people's minds.
So he'd really know the people's minds inside out, right.
Because, through implementing next day delivery in his business,
he must have known what would happen in the future.
When next day delivery becomes the norm,
he understood that everyone would come to hate the businesses
that take over 3 days to delivery their goods.
They'd go, 'What's this? Aren't they doing their jobs?'
and they'll think, 'I should have bought from Amazon'.
He knew this, so he implemented it.
But, in other words, to the employees and the competitors,
this would appear as a devilish behavior.
The work environment of the employees are very often criticized,
and the same goes for the issue of competitors.
Acquisitions.
What if they don't agree to the acquisition?
If they don't agree, he'll tell them that he'll sell
the products they're selling for free.
That's how brutal he can be.
He knows that if Amazon starts selling their product for free
to have a head-to-head match, his business would win
so he's telling them he'll crush their company.
Is he the devil?
Or is he an angel.
To describe Bezos in one phrase, he's 'the man of improvisation'.
It's not a contradiction, he's 'the man of improvisation'.
It's what people may call this person when evaluating him.
We can see his skills at improvising
when we look at his work experiences.
He was originally in the finance industry, you see.
He had quite a high status in the finance industry, too.
Various things had happened while he was growing up.
He had quite a complicated background growing up,
but he had entered the finance industry after that, and had quite a high status.
However,
Bezos really likes data,
so while he was researching data,
he had to look into which companies were growing in the finance industry,
so while he was looking up, he noticed that the internet
would be growing explosively.
He knew he had to do a business through the internet.
That he had to move online in an adequate way.
Back then, the US finance industry was in the limelight.
Bezos was an elite member, with a promising future at the company
but despite that, he goes to his superior and says this.
'I'd like to try online sales.'
His superior tried to stop him. 'It's not a bad idea.'
'Knowing you, you might be able to succeed.'
'But it'd only be a good idea if you weren't in the position
you are in right now.'
'As long as you've got this status at this company, it's not a good idea.'
'I think you'd benefit more from staying in this company.'
But Bezos threw it all away and left.
He left his company and started online sales.
But this was the beginning of the legendary tale.
This improvisation that has changed his situation.
He never gets restricted by the organization,
or what he had been doing until then.
If it works, he keeps trying, and if it doesn't work, he stops.
That's how he works.
And 'fact over solidarity'.
It's quite a difficult expression.
He values data over teamwork.
This is his devilish side.
At a regular company, the competent ones
would get to speak first during a meeting.
There'd be an order and a rank, after all.
But Bezos did not agree to this.
Regardless of your power, you must show the data,
and if the data is correct, it's fine.
If the data isn't correct, if there's an error or a contraction, it's useless.
Those who quit state that this meeting is very challenging.
Some people even say they had quit because the meetings were so hard.
Because this meeting always entailed the exchange of criticisms.
They exchange criticisms, confronting each other's job.
If the quality of the data isn't good, or if the data
they've prepared hasn't been organized,
they say this brings about very harsh criticisms.
So there's that side.
This meeting, I'll be telling you about it later on,
should I just explain it first and then move on?
6-page memos.
It's the famous meeting style exclusive to Amazon.
It's the famous meeting style exclusive to Amazon.
Everyone, have you ever heard of this?
Apparently, they don't let you use PowerPoint at Amazon.
When you do a presentation using PowerPoint,
the degree of delivery varies depending on the condition
of the presentation, right?
This method of delivery doesn't leave any data, you see.
So don't rely on PowerPoint slides.
Deliver using paper instead.
Let's make it so we can delivery everything on paper.
This means that trying to wing it at the meeting
with some amount of data would not work.
And the number of pages has also been set, to 6.
Why is this? This is the interesting part.
It takes the same form as when you're releasing something new
in the media, stating you'll develop such and such service or product.
So, is your plan the same quality it will be when you present
this product or service to the world?
This is where the idea came from.
The… uh… the…
dumpling…
dumplings, if you said 'I think pink dumplings would sell well!',
they'd criticize your idea, saying it is poor.
You can only participate in the meetings if you densely document
in 6 whole pages
why you need to paint these dumplings in pink and sell them.
At the meetings, they distribute the 6-page data to everyone
and give everyone 20 minutes to read it.
So they won't forgive anyone who speaks without understanding the data.
The person creating the data must organize everything into 6 pages,
and those participating in the meeting must understand those 6 pages
within 20 minutes.
And they must make sure to understand it before they can speak.
So the one creating the data and those participating in the meeting
must all be thorough.
Fact over solidarity.
Prioritizing data.
Despite the fact that this is very effcient,
it shows that they value speed very much.
It's speed and fact.
There aren't any elements like feelings here, right?
There's no room for consideration.
Speed and fact.
And the third factor is
the very long term vision, this is the incredible part.
It's the super long shot.
What makes this interesting is,
most entrepreneurs can only think about
what happens in the next 4 quarters, or the next few months.
The same goes for you, right?
What happens this year, the furthest we'd look is still within this year.
We make plans for what we do this year,
but we can't predict what would happen next year,
so we don't come to think about next year, or the year after that, right.
Since we don't know what may happen.
But he's been quoted as saying that those who think about the next 2, 3 months–
no, the next 2, 3 years can only achieve work within that scale.
Because, a great undertaking cannot be achieved in 2~3 years.
This is certain, right?
Even if it's me, Bezos,
I'm Bezos right now.
Even if I'm Bezos, if I had to achieve something within 2~3 years,
what I can do will be limited.
But when I am told that I can take 7 years, a lot of ideas come to mind.
Something would definitely get started from there.
I believe that this may be the greatest reason
why Bezos has achieved success.
If you can't understand that he is someone
with this very long term vision,
we can only understand that he is a very logical and speedy person.
Then, we may think he's a genius with no human emotions,
but I think the true stance is that Bezos has the ability to think about things
in very long term.
So he has this incredible stance of having a super long term vision,
he's very capable.
Normally, people only look 2~3 years ahead,
but he is someone with the ability to consider the next decades.
The service this has created is AWS, the Amazon Web Service.
Actually, the Amazon Web Service
is a service that couldn't even have been conceived
had it not been done in very long term.
An internet business creating a cloud service, you say?
A considerable number of facility investors have once questioned
when it'd be possible to get a return.
This was actually in 2001, which is known
as the dot-com bubble (Internet Bubble).
In other words, IT businesses were in boom,
but there already were a great number of similar businesses.
This is similar to comedy.
They rose with a roar, but most of them were mediocre entertainers
with nothing special, right?
It's true, no, I don't mean it's true,
that's not it.
There were a great number of them, there were so many
due to the comedy boom, right.
All sorts of people came out, right.
But 90% of them disappear, this is what a boom is.
This is what a boom is.
Everyone enthused over it, thinking all comedy is great,
but only very few survive.
There are very few entertainers who can stay active for over 10, 15 years.
The same goes for IT businesses.
It was only very briefly hat people invested in them,
going 'An IT business, yay!'
In the end, only the skilled businesses can survive.
When the dot-com bubble had burst with a pop.
The next few years after that were desperate.
It was said that the profit wasn't increasing.
Since they kept just circulating this, and then investing
all the profit in the facilities.
When asked about what was going on, as the profit wasn't increasing at all,
the reason he was able
to say, 'It's a cloud' was because he had this very long term vision.
Moreover, Blue Origin, this is the incredible part.
It's whether or not we're really understanding
what Bezos's ultimate goal is.
This Blue Origin is in the space industry.
Sending out a rocket to take humans to the space.
Elon Musk of Tesla is also running a space business,
and Takafumi Horie is also running a space business,
so you might be thinking, 'Everyone in the IT industry must love the space,
wow, what romanticists!'
That's not it.
Bezos is planning to head to space with a very clear vision.
Why is this?
Surely, the speed of growth for the humankind
will cause this planet's environment to reach its limit.
I've recently made a video on this, like the lesson on climate change.
About the increased population,
or about what makes the economy go around.
It places a lot of burden on the environment.
This means the humankind cannot survive on Earth alone.
After thinking clearly about these things,
he'd send people
into space, and then, in there,
so, in other words, this is the space version of the Age of Discovery.
His vision is to create a colony in space to split up the industry
between there and the land.
The Heavy and Chemical Industry, the heavy industry,
and the steel or the mechanical industry to space.
There are various things in space, the materials are widely varied.
It's about developing those things in space.
Contrarily, they'd use the Earth as the location for residence
and the light industry.
So the humankind can progress further when we divide the areas
at a spatial level.
He is developing the space with these objectives.
With AWS, he was looking decades ahead.
With Blue Origin, he's looking centuries ahead.
The very long term vision that lets him conceive these ideas
is very interesting, huh?
It's very interesting how everything Bezos does
over a long time span turns out later in time.
Apparently, Bezos has recruited the CEO of the media company MTV,
so, he has recruited the CEO of a large company in the media broadcasting industry
and gave her a directorial position.
Why has he done that?
And so, Prime Video and Music were founded.
And, on another directorial position,
he has hired the counsel of the Department of Defense.
Why has he done that?
And so, AWS was recruited by the Department of Defense.
As such, even with allocating the directors,
he looked quite far ahead and identified the human resources
he needed to reach out in these areas.
Had he thought, 'I need profit right now,
I want to sell something right now',
he'd have created a formation where he could make the most money
with the human resources he had at the time.
But it wasn't about right now.
Bezos is someone who can use the method of allocating human resources
to achieve a certain objective decades later, it's so interesting.
Speed, logic and long term.
So he fuses these three skills to teach his employees thoroughly
about the AI fly wheel.
That you must never stop this circulation.
Therefore, what Amazon is doing
is saying you must never stop the circulation
with the sole objective of building the basis
and raising profit through this to ultimately send out Blue Origin,
to send the humankind out to space.
It's an incredible power.
And that's why his actions are full of contradiction at times.
Hey, isn't Bezos someone like this? Oh, he's not.
Then isn't he someone like this? No, he's not.
Then just what is he trying to do?
I see, he wanted to do those things that'll become clear later in time!
This is the man who has reached 15 trillion yen.
[Next episode – predicting Jeff Bezos's future]
So fresh food, music, entertainment, home appliances.
And transportation, data, cloud, everything.
Moreover, wouldn't he target ads, pharmaceutics,
bank and insurance next?
They're merely yet to be discovered by Bezos.
When Bezos locks on, don't try and run away.
Online community, PROGRESS.
[Nakata Atsuhiko's online salon, PROGRESS, 3,700 members, 980 yen/month]
[Watch YouTube University]
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People can be anything, starting from whenever.
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