Jeff Bezos’s Audacious Bet To Build the First “Vaccinated” Supply Chain

“If you’re a shareowner in Amazon, you may want to take a seat.”

An unlock is the discovery of an accelerant for the brand, product, or service invisible in plain sight. The mold on cheese curing disease was a substantial unlock (penicillin). So is administering a small dose of a pathogen to immunize someone from the complete, more harmful pathogen (vaccines).

In the last 20 years, there have been three unlocks in the business world that have created over $500 billion in shareholder value. I believe the fourth was revealed last week. So, the first three, in chronological order:

Temples

Steve Jobs zigged when everyone was zagging. He reallocated billions from traditional brand building to distribution, opening stores — temples to the brand. Any great decision seems logical, even pedestrian, in the rearview mirror. But Apple’s move to invest in bricks and mortar flew in the face of every trend. In 2001, stores were dead. Pundits predicted that e-commerce would take over.

The iPhone is the most profitable product in history, not because the product is tangibly superior (the Galaxy is better on many metrics), but because of where it’s sold. Buying a phone at an Apple store is sex with Tom Brady. Buying an Android at a Best Buy, AT&T, or Verizon store is having sex with a guy named Roy on a bad carpet under a neon light tube.

Monogamy

Married households aggregate wealth faster than those headed by a single person. Our superpower as a species is cooperation. When we agree to fully cooperate with someone … wonderful things can happen. In addition to building wealth (the means), you can achieve the ends, producing things that look, smell, and feel like you who are good citizens — why we are here. But I digress.

Firms who are in transactions businesses, like retail, are serially dating. Being single, while it has its moments, is exhausting and expensive. Equinox, Tinder, vodka, and hangovers all tax your time and…