The Kindled story of Kindle — A Case Study
As an avid reader, having a Kindle has been a game changer. The power of carrying thousands of books on your bag, and being able to read any time of the day or night, is has been a dream come true.
So, I wanted to understand, how this amazing invention came to be.
Kindle was first launched on November 19, 2007. However, the concept was developed way ahead.
2003 was a great year for both Apple and Amazon. Apple had made a huge disruption in music with iPods, while Amazon had just made their first profitable quarter. It is said that one night, Jobs invited Bezos to a dinner where he demoed Apple’s first windows application — iTunes. Through the demo, Jobs wanted to give a message to Bezos that everything was moving online, and the CDs and Cassettes that were high sellers in Amazon, could disappear in the coming days.
Bezos knew he had to do something about it. Either be a fast follower and do something similar to Apple in Music or be an inventor.
In the early 2004, Bezos made Steve Kessel, the lead of company’s digital business. This decision was confusing to a lot of people since Kessel was the VP of media retail, looking after the sales of books, music, video, and more. He would now be supervising the digital media business which consisted of an e-books team of roughly five people and no real prospects of growth.
Although there were proposals that Kessel could oversee both digital and the physical media, Bezos made sure, that the two should be completely separate from one another. He wasn’t focused on what to build, rather on who and how. And he knew Kessel would be the perfect leader.
Since Amazon was already working with Music, Books, and Videos, something along these domains were reachable and practical. Bezos made it clear that Amazon had to be the inventor, so Music was out of the picture.
With videos, in the 2004s, video had not gone digital, which seemed like an opportunity, but the barriers were just too high. With no fast internet to stream the video files, and the legalities with the studios, it was a lot of work.
Books were still the single largest category at Amazon. Although there were some companies working with e-books, the business was tiny; and most importantly, there was no good way to read books. PC was an only option, and everyone who loves reading know it is not a good experience.
So, this started the market research.
Customers wanted something equivalent to iPods for books.
Beginning with this concept, they moved forward.
In September 2004, they hired Greg Zehr who had been a VP of hardware engineering at Palm Computing and Apple. A separate office was setup for him in Silicon Valley so that Amazon could tap into the Talent pool. Simultaneously, an engineering team was being formed in the Seattle office for cloud and backend functions.
Then, in April 2005, Amazon acquired Mobipocket. Mobipocket was a small company based in France that had built a software application for viewing and reading books on PCs and mobile devices.
They first identified the core of the product:
1. Single purpose device only meant for book lovers to dive into books, not a multipurpose device with distractions.
2. Accessibility of books without the need of a cable or computer download to access books from anywhere and anytime.
The ideation started in early 2004, and by early 2007s, the team already had a working prototype. Bezos would call the team to an unsolicited location where they would each read books with the prototype and then gather around to share experiences to improve it.
In November 19, 2007 Kindle became the first e-book reader with 90,000 books available for purchase. It got sold out in less than 6 hours.
In their first launch, they gave users a way to send them feedback. Kessel and the team would personally look into those feedback, which later birthed Kindle 2 in 2009.
Kindle 2 incorporated a lot of user’s feedback: a sleeker design, 25% longer battery life, faster page turns, memory expansion up to 2 GB, Read-to-me feature, and 230,000 books for purchase.
They continued the improvement, and iteration throughout the year, and by 2012, Kindle had been the world’s best-selling e-reader for five years straight. The 5th iteration of Kindle, Paperwhite was launched in 2012 which even in 2024 is the best-selling Kindle.
Throughout the years, Kindle has evolved and become better for people everywhere around the world.
Takeaways
Through this amazing case study of Kindle, here are the five key takeaways, we, as Product Managers must look into:
1. Identify the value chain:
Amazon was already working with Books. Although it was physical, they knew the supply chain by being on the middle of everything — the writers, publications, and retailers to the customers. Through Kindle, they were no longer the ones in the middle, but in everywhere. So, if you are trying to reinvent a wheel, identify what you already have, and start with it.
2. Working Backwards:
Had Amazon thought what they were just an e-commerce platform, not a hardware company, the world might never have a Kindle. They identified what the customers needed, and then gathered resources after it. Most times in Product management, you ought to think out of the box.
3. Make your product ever evolving:
Launched in 2007, Kindle has successfully been the best-selling ebook reader till date. This is because it is evolving, with new technologies, and with its customers.
4. Believe in the Product you are working for:
Bezos and the team were faced with multiple concerns, and criticism when they were working on Kindle. However, Bezos knew what disruption would look like. He believed in this team, and his vision of the Product.
And lastly, a simple yet critical takeaway:
5. Your estimated time and resources mean nothing:
Humans are biased creatures, and usually we tend to overestimate ourselves. As a leader, we must be flexible to these estimates, because those are just that — Estimates.
Conclusion
In the ever-evolving landscape of innovation, the journey of Kindle stands as a beacon of inspiration. It reminds us that greatness often lies on the other side of uncertainty. In the face of doubt and skepticism, it was the unwavering belief of visionary leaders, the relentless dedication of a talented team, and the synergy born from collaboration that propelled Kindle from concept to revolution. So, let this case study serve as a reminder that no challenge is insurmountable. For when we dare to dream, and work together to turn those dreams into actions, we unlock the potential to create wonders that shape the future.
I have also talked about this in detail in this video, if you are into that kind of stuff ;)
