It started with a stupid idea that Jeff Bezos had. The average bookstore has about 150,000 titles in stock at any one time; a really big one maybe has an inventory of up to 300,000. “Why can’t we have a million?“ asked Jeff Bezos. “Because,“ said the experts, “sourcing that amount of stock will bankrupt you.” Well, Bezos asked the question, didn’t like the answer the experts gave him, and went out and got the million titles. As he admitted later, “Those people who told us it would nearly kill us were right. It nearly did.“ But Amazon’s ability to offer almost any book that anyone wanted became the phenomenon that drove its brand success.

Jeff Bezos often thinks the unthinkable. For example, take one-click shopping. Until the arrival of Amazon, retail on the web was defined by the shopping cart approach. Basically, online retailers simply simulated the real-world experience of visiting a store, where you fill up your trolley, shopping basket, or hands by browsing aisles/sections and selecting your purchases. So on the web you clicked on a shopping cart icon and scrolled up and down and in and out of sections, choosing what you wanted and adding it to your cart.

There was a big problem with this: it took too long! People expected the Internet to deliver a speedy service that was not a simulation of real life; they wanted an experience that could only be found online. They were not comparing the time it takes to go online, browse, shop, and purchase with the time it takes to get into a car, drive to a supermarket, shop, and queue at the checkout. They were comparing it with an expectation they had of how fast and easy it should be, and with the other form of home shopping: phoning. People were abandoning their online carts, often halfway through the shopping process, and not making purchases because of frustration at the length of time the process took. It could often take longer, for example, to buy cinema tickets online than by phone.

Why was this, Jeff Bezos and his team at Amazon asked? Why were online retailers just replicating the real-life shopping experience in a virtual environment? Put simply, it was because online retailers were not thinking about what people wanted in the virtual world. Customers wanted a totally different experience, not a carbon copy of reality.

Amazon dared to ask the stupid question: why can’t we just get the shopping done with one click of a button? And it realized that actually you could. Amazon realised that by storing cookies to capture all the buyer info (such as the shipping address and credit card info), the purchaser would only need to press one button to buy in the future. Amazon spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars developing this cookie technology, which it then patented in the United States. It is a simple concept that has revolutionized home shopping.

Amazon’s patenting of the technology was the source of much controversy. People objected to the fact that Amazon benefited from other people’s early web development, and they complained that Amazon should not try to hog advantages like this. Jeff Bezos thought about this, and his response was to write an open letter about it on the Amazon website. He explained that the patent was valid not necessarily for the technology alone, which is trivial to duplicate, but for the breakthrough thinking.

Thinking. That word is the most important in the process we are describing here. And it is what Amazon and others who develop great ideas do a lot. They think. They think for themselves. They interrogate what is the given, the norm, and they think how it can be changed. They don’t accept the received wisdom of others or the findings of market research and consultants’ reports. They question; they ponder; they are possessed of a restless curiosity that pushes them towards discovery and insight.

The capacity for independent thought and the ability to reason are the most powerful gifts we have as humans, and among our greatest responsibilities. So why is it when we go to work that we so often seem to throw that gift away and delegate that responsibility to others?

Amazon thinks. Apple thinks different. When IBM was founded over one hundred years ago, its corporate mantra was: Think.

How, then, do we break down the stages of “thinking“ to help us understand and improve the experiences of our customers? We have identified three guiding principles:

• Cause and effect. Interrogate like a child why things are the way they are. Use the ‘5’ whys. Be naïve in questioning what factors are affecting the moment that your customer experiences your brand.

• Perfect world. Think creatively. What is the perfect experience that we can bring to customers?

•  “Why?” and “Why not?” Challenge why this would bring you and your customer real value, and challenge why it can’t be done.

Amazon, Apple, Sony Playstation, Progressive, Carphone Warehouse, and the many other companies we feature in this book dare to think differently. But they also have the courage of their convictions and make it happen. In other words they dare to do.

Find out more in our book SEE, FEEL, THINK, DO.

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