How will Amazon maintain its culture as it approaches 1.3 million employees and prepares for its founder Jeff Bezos to step down as CEO? One answer is the set of processes and principles that the company has put into place, the "Invention Machine," created by Bezos and his leadership team inside the company.
That's the assessment of Bill Carr, a former Amazon executive and the co-author of the new book, Working Backwards, with fellow Amazon veteran Colin Bryar.
Beyond providing a blueprint for others, he predicts that Amazon's processes and principles will "enable the company to continue to thrive and innovate for decades after Jeff’s departure" as CEO. Bezos will remain involved with the company as executive chairman. On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Carr discusses the new book, describes Amazon's unique approaches, and shares inside stories including the offhand remark by the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs that contributed to the creation of some of Amazon’s most important products and services.

Amazon's drones finally take off, inside Anduril's Seattle-area buildup, and an AirTag leads to a secret Amazon facility
38:56

Bezos and Liverpool FC, a Meta vet's AI startup, Auger's Dallas move, and the demise of Microsoft's AI blob
36:39

Elon Musk's Starlink swagger, SpaceX vs. the cloud giants, and Seattle’s tech universe revisited
28:58