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Ca Se StUD y 3 Case Study 3 143
The Amazon of Innovation
On Cyber Monday, December 1, 2014, Amazon.com customers You may think of Amazon as simply an online retailer,
ordered more than 18 toys per second. And almost 60 percent of and that is indeed where the company achieved most of its
Amazon's holiday shoppers bought gifts using a mobile device. success. To do this, Amazon had to build enormous support-
This contributed to a 20 percent increase in Amazon's total an- ing infrastructure—just imagine the information systems and
nual sales of $89B. Amazon's last order for the holiday season fulfillment facilities needed to ship toys ordered at a rate of 18
was placed on December 24 at 10:24 PM and was delivered at per second. That infrastructure, however, is needed only dur-
11:06 PM just in time for Christmas. (Some of Amazon’s major ing the busy holiday season. Most of the year, Amazon is left
innovations are listed in Figure 3-18.) with excess infrastructure capacity. Starting in 2000, Ama-
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Innovation at Amazon
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