I have always admired Jeff Bezos as an entrepreneur because he actually did what he set out to do. Many other entrepreneurs who succeeded got lucky. That is not to say they were not smart, successful or deserving – after all they were smart enough to capitalize on their luck when it presented itself. However, Jeff is rather unique in having thought through which industry to enter and why and in being supremely logical in its execution (e.g.; choosing to be in Seattle to be near Ingram).

In the video, Jeff presents the history of Amazon and its vision with lots of fun anecdotes. The one about the Bulgarian who sent a floppy disk with $200 in cash hidden inside of it with a note saying: “The money is in the floppy disk. Custom officials steal money but don’t read English” is priceless 🙂

Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

“Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend an entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent in finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half-an-hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar-box in the next street. The total effort which would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil.”

Interestingly, Parkinson observed a similar manifestation in the British Civil Service, noting that as Britain’s overseas empire declined in importance, the number of employees at the Colonial Office increased.

According to Parkinson, this is motivated by two forces: (1) “An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals” and (2) “Officials make work for each other.” He also noted that the total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rose by 5-7% per year “irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done”.

The analysis first appeared in an article in The Economist in November 1955 and was then articulated in a book Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress, (London, John Murray, 1958).

I am not back to the U.S. yet – I probably won’t be back for another month as this business trip keeps getting extended – but I am back to blogging 🙂 Not that I ran out of things to say – quite the contrary – but I got so busy with work that I no longer had time to blog. To give you a foretaste of what’s to come, upcoming posts will cover how Chinese farmers are funding U.S. consumption, travel recommendations for Turkey, discussions on renting versus owning, the state of the U.S. economy and the usual posts on movie and book reviews.