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Amazon has revolutionised the way we do business on the internet. It is now revolutionising the way we talk about doing business
Since when have companies been grammatical elements?
As a verb form McDonalds entered the global business lexicon in the 1970s -'we're McDonaldising the contract cleaning'. McDonaldisers broke service businesses down into their component activities, then applied production methods to re-engineer cost and quality standards.
Amazon has achieved the same status just five years after start-up - becoming the model for how e-commerce will re-engineer whole industries. Venture capitalists' desks are thick with business plans promising `we're going to Amazon the insurance/travel/ property business...' And oldeconomy businesses, such as Barnes & Noble or Waterstones in books, or Virgin and Tower in music and video, are obsessing about how to avoid `getting Amazoned'.
So Amazon isn't just 'an online bookseller'?
That's like saying the Apple II was just 'a small computer'.
When Jeff Bezos set up Amazon, books were an attractive entry product: you didn't need to see or feel the product before buying, and the established industry was highcost and unresponsive. Online,...