Fascinating re. Amazon’s internal-organisation evolution. Parallel implications for education institutions? https://t.co/mpkJixk1Po #mscedc

Is Amazon the cyborg business model? In this piece from today’s Guardian, I wonder if it is. And what it says to educational institutions.

Amazon Web Services: the secret to the online retailer’s future success

The article is wide-ranging, but I’m struck by this section:

“In effect, Bezos was asking Amazon to stop behaving like one singular company, and start behaving like hundreds of mini companies all bound together through one shared CEO. That command was the beginning of Amazon Web Services, which officially launched in July 2002.”

I’m no business guru, but I’m struck by the seemingly deliberate nurturing of internal inefficiencies (at one scale of analysis) in order to achieve a higher level of efficiency (on another scale of analysis).

What does this suggest for educational institutions? I can only guess and imagine. Here’s one thought. Back to the article, regarding how Amazon’s move looked from the outside: “Some spotted this transformation as it happened, but drew the wrong conclusions.” Such commentators would have urged outsourcing, and focusing on Amazon’s seemingly key product. But (and, admittedly, history is written after the even) Amazon got away with something else, both riding and aiding the developing evolution of the internet. The article’s section entitled ‘Cloud on the Horizon’ is especially suggestive here.

How about, then, an educational institution adopting a similar strategy to Amazon’s, in order to foster in-house networking potential? I imagine it would have to be a remarkably big institution, a global player with courage to play such a game. Perhaps, in their own way, the ancient collegiate universities such as Oxford and Cambridge have been playing this for centuries, and Amazon is a late entrant into the form.

But, as the article notes, “Internet services are notoriously hard to pull off at scale”. Amazon seems have won a comparative advantage, for the time being at least. What this all highlights for me is that, in digital technology and in education, scale is a significantly potent and political part of what works, and how. I’m looking forward to probing that more, as this course unfolds.

 

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