首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Jeff Bezos Taking the long view A)Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owes much of his success to his ability
Jeff Bezos Taking the long view A)Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owes much of his success to his ability
admin
2014-12-26
29
问题
Jeff Bezos Taking the long view
A)Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owes much of his success to his ability to look beyond the short-term view of things.
B)Inside a remote mountain in Texas, a huge clock is being pieced together, capable of telling the time for the next 10,000 years. Once the clock is finished, people willing to make the difficult trek will be able to visit the vast chamber housing it, along with displays marking various anniversaries of its operation. On a website set up to track the progress of this "10,000-year clock", Jeff Bezos, who has invested $42m of his own money in the project, describes this impressive feat of engineering as "an icon for long-term thinking".
C)That description applies just as much to Mr Bezos himself. The founder and chief executive of Amazon has often ruffled investors’ feathers by sacrificing short-term profits to make big bets on new technologies that, he insists, will produce richer returns for the company’ s shareholders in future.
D)Some of these gambles have paid off handsomely. They have also enhanced Mr Bezos’s reputation as a technological seer(先知). "In the last few years there has been a re-acceleration of the rate of change in technology," he says. His impressive ability to identify and profit from the resulting disruptions means he is widely seen as the person best placed to fill the shoes of the late Steve Jobs as the industry’ s leading visionary.
E)Mr Bezos’ s willingness to take a long-term view also explains his fascination with space travel, and his decision to found a secretive company called Blue Origin, one of several start-ups now building spacecraft with private funding. It might seem like a risky bet, but the same was said of many of Amazon’ s unusual moves in the past. Successful firms, he says, tend to be the ones that are willing to explore uncharted territories.
F)Eyebrows were raised, for example, when Amazon moved into the business of providing cloud-computing services to technology firms—which seemed an odd choice for an online retailer.
G)But the company has since established itself as a leader in the field. "A big piece of the story we tell ourselves about who we are is that we are willing to invent," Mr Bezos told shareholders at Amazon’ s annual meeting last year. "And very importantly, we are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time."
The view from the garage
H)Amazon’s culture has been deeply influenced by Mr Bezos’s own experiences. A computer-science graduate from Princeton, he returned to his alma mater last year to give a speech to students that provided some fascinating insights into his psychology as an entrepreneur.
I)He explained that he had been a "garage inventor" from a young age. His creations included a solar cooker made out of an umbrella and tin foil, which did not work very well, and an automatic gate-closer made out of cement-filled tyres.
J)That passion for invention has not deserted Mr Bezos, who last year filed a patent(专利)for a system of tiny airbags that can be incorporated into smartphones, to prevent them from being damaged if dropped. Even so, in the 1990s he hesitated to leave a good job in the world of finance to set up Amazon after a colleague he respected advised him against it. But Mr Bezos applied what he calls a "regret minimisation framework", imagining whether, as an 80-year-old looking back, he would regret the decision not to strike out on his own. He concluded that he would, and with encouragement from his wife he took the plunge as an entrepreneur. They moved from New York to Seattle and he founded the company, in time-honoured fashion for American technology start-ups, in his garage.
K)This may explain why Mr Bezos is so keen to ensure that Amazon preserves its own appetite for risk-taking. As companies grow, there is a danger that novel ideas get snuffed out by managers’ desire to conform and play it safe. "You get social cohesion at the expense of truth," he says. He believes that the best way to guard against this is for leaders to encourage their staff to work on big new ideas. "It’s like exercising muscles," he adds. "Either you use them or you lose them."
L)Mr Bezos doesn’t tell where he might place more big bets in future, but there have been persistent rumours that Amazon might launch a smartphone, possibly as soon as this year. With Amazon’ s video-streaming and music services, Mr Bezos clearly has Netflix and Apple in his sights. And in recent weeks there has been speculation that Amazon is toying with the idea of opening a bricks-and-mortar shop to promote sales of the Kindle, by letting customers try it in person. The success of Apple’s hugely profitable chain of retail stores shows that even in the era of e-commerce, there are some things people prefer to buy the old-fashioned way.
Keeping it simple
M)During the design of the original Kindle, for example, Mr Bezos insisted that the e-reader had to work without needing to be plugged into a PC. That meant giving it wireless connectivity. But he also wanted it to work everywhere, not just in Wi-Fi hotspots, and without the need for a monthly contract. This prompted the Kindle team to devise a new business model, striking deals with mobile-phone operators to allow Kindle users to download e-books without having to pay network fees. The ability to download books anywhere does not simply make life easier for users; it also encourages them to buy more books. The Kindle is an e-reader, but it is also a portable bookshop.
N)Not all of his bets succeed. Who remembers Amazon Auctions, for example, or Amapedia, Amazon’s attempt to build a Wikipedia-like user-generated product directory? Even more numerous are the bets that Mr Bezos has placed on new initiatives that have yet to prove their worth. Amazon has branched out into own-brand products, has set up specialist e-commerce sites and is dabbling in movie making and television production.
O)Staying on top in the fast-changing world of technology is hard, too. Mr Bezos is bound to be the target of more criticism as his company’ s huge investments in new areas continue to put a dent in its bottom line. His next move could be into smart phones or a video-streaming service that competes with Netflix, but it is just as likely to be something entirely unexpected. By being unusually patient, he hopes to create businesses that rivals will find harder to assail. As the investments in both Blue Origin and the 10,000-year clock show, it is the challenge of reaching for distant horizons that really makes Amazon’ s boss tick.
It is very hard to be the leader in the changing world but such challenges of reaching for distant horizons has motivated Amazon’ s boss.
选项
答案
O
解析
此句意为:在这个风云变幻的世界里保持领先的地位是非常困难的.但是探寻未知世界的挑战一直激励着亚马逊的老板。根据题干可以定位到O段中的Staying on top in the fast—changing world of technology is hard和it is the challenge ofreaching for distant horizons that really makes Amazon’s boss tick.文中makesAmazon’s boss tick是题干中的motivated Amazon’s boss的比喻性说法。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/7pgFFFFM
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
Welcome,Freshmen.HaveaniPod.A)Takingastepthatmanyprofessorsmayviewasabitcounterproductive,somecollegesanduni
A、Theycanpreservewineformuchlongerperiod.B、Theycanbemoreconvenienttotransport.C、Theymakewinetastemuchbetter.
Atsomepointin2008,someone,probablyineitherAsiaorAfrica,madethedecisiontomovefromthecountrysidetothecity.T
A、AskthepolicemaninMexicoCity.B、ReturntoNewYorkimmediately.C、Askforhelpfromthewoman.D、Sendmoneytohisbrother
Biologically,thereisonlyonequalitywhichdistinguishesusfromanimals:theabilitytolaugh.Inauniversewhichappearst
Biologically,thereisonlyonequalitywhichdistinguishesusfromanimals:theabilitytolaugh.Inauniversewhichappearst
Go(围棋)isanancientAsiangame.Inrecentyears,computerexperts,particularlythose【C1】______inartificialintelligence,have
Go(围棋)isanancientAsiangame.Inrecentyears,computerexperts,particularlythose【C1】______inartificialintelligence,have
A、Asmalltownwherecomputersweresold.B、Aprivatecomputerschool.C、Alibraryofcomputerbooks.D、Aprojectaboutcomputer
A、Hisbossassignedhimtodoaverydifficultproject.B、Hefindsithardtofulfilltheworkbeforethedeadline.C、Hedoesn’t
随机试题
孕妇,28岁,G3P0,妊娠32周,以往有2次人工流产史。突然阴道流血约200ml。检查:血压14.63/7.98kPa(110/60mmHg),腹软,无压痛。子宫底高度31cm,胎头先露,胎头浮,胎心率136次/分。首先考虑的诊断是
患者,男性,32岁。突发右胸痛,呼吸困难,查体:语音震颤减弱,气管向左侧移位,叩诊右侧为鼓音,该患者查体还可见
猩红热的病因为
消化性溃疡活动时,下列哪种说法是错误的
患者,女,21岁。诉咀嚼无力两年余。口腔检查:下颌第一恒磨牙近远中牙周袋约8mm深,牙齿松动Ⅱ度。口腔卫生尚佳,下前牙牙石(+),松动Ⅱ度,拟诊
下面既不属于农用地利用资料也不属于农用地经济资料的有()。
TD-SCDMA采用TDD模式,并同时采用了()等一系列高新技术。
()是保障教育法正确制定的关键,也是保障教育法正确实施的必要手段,还是保障教育法律关系正常运行的重要途径。
当前火星探测成为天文热点,火星或其他星球是否有生命体也成为科学界研究的新显学。据报道,某国科学家在一块60万年前来到地球的火星陨石上发现了有机生物的痕迹,因为该陨石由二氧化碳化合物构成,该化合物产生于甲烷,而甲烷可以是微生物受到高压和高温作用时产生的。由此
______(通过熬夜工作)thatwemanagedtocompleteourtask.
最新回复
(
0
)