My view of Amazon is that the biggest threat to Amazon is Amazon. I am old enough to have watched this movie so many times, I know the ending. When everything is going great for a company, it starts to think that it can do everything and expands the WTP to everything attractive and interesting. That was P&G in the 1980s. Gee what are the three biggest categories in food that we are not in? Sodas, orange juice and cookies. No problem, we will just waltz in and win in those businesses with Orange Crush soda, Citrus Hill orange juice and Duncan Hines cookies. All failed — and distracted P&G from its core business. It recovered but, frankly only with a very big strategy intervention that I know more than a few things about. Then IBM in the 1990s — hey telecom equipment isn’t much different than computer equipment, let’s get into PBX’s and everything under the sun. That was the end of IBM. And GE — we can do anything — movies, TV, credit, etc. That was the end of GE.

That is what is going to kill Amazon. Nobody is good at everything. And it is impossible to stop yourself from believing it. And that is the beginning of the end.