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
60
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.
Some of Mr Bezos’ big bets have made huge profits and these also enhanced his reputation as a great predictor in technologies.
选项
答案
D
解析
此句意为:贝佐斯先生的一些大的赌注产生了巨大的经济回报,这也为他赢得了伟大的科技预言家的美名。根据题干中的enhanced his reputation可以定位到D段中的Some of these gambles have paid off handsomely.They have also enhanced Mr Bezos’s reputation as a technological seer,其中predictor和seer都是先知、预言家的意思。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/eYm7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
A、Theabilitytodevelopsoftwareproducts.B、Flexibilityandindependenceinwork.C、Agoodrelationshipwithcustomers.D、Expe
A、Shehadnotimereadingtheprojectproposal.B、Theman’sproposalwasterriblywritten.C、It’snotherresponsibilitytohelp
Worldleadersneedtotakeactionontheenergycrisisthatistakingshapebeforeoureyes.Oilpricesare【C1】______anditlook
Worldleadersneedtotakeactionontheenergycrisisthatistakingshapebeforeoureyes.Oilpricesare【C1】______anditlook
A、Itwillbecomemorepopularthanbefore.B、Itwillhaveitstransportationdeveloped.C、Itsfootballindustrywillbeimproved
儒家思想是中国传统文化的基石。它出现在大约2500年前的春秋时期(theSpringandAutumnPeriod),是建立在夏、商、周朝的传统文化之上,并由孔子创立的完整观念体系(ideologicalsystem)。儒家思想博大精深,涵盖了
A、AskthepolicemaninMexicoCity.B、ReturntoNewYorkimmediately.C、Askforhelpfromthewoman.D、Sendmoneytohisbrother
A、Shedidn’tknowhowshehadfinisheditsoearly.B、Shewasn’tabletomanagetheprojectwell.C、Shewasnotsurehowtosolv
A、Hisbossassignedhimtodoaverydifficultproject.B、Hefindsithardtofulfilltheworkbeforethedeadline.C、Hedoesn’t
A、Increasingfinesfortrafficviolation.B、Reducingtollsonhighways.C、Banningpublictransportpartially.D、Enlarginginsura
随机试题
若某肿瘤可检测到CD20,则该肿瘤可能是
能疏肝理气,和中,化痰的中药有
建设工程项目的信息管理是通过对各个系统、各项工作和各种数据的管理,使项目的()能方便和有效地获取、存储、存档、处理的交流。
规范性原则、易解性原则和易得性原则属于信息()应遵循的要求。
(2008年)张某拟设立个人独资企业。2007年3月2日,张某将设立申请书等申请设立登记文件提交到拟定设立的个人独资企业所在地工商行政管理机关,设立申请书的有关内容如下:张某以其房产、劳务和现金3万元出资;企业名称为A贸易有限公司。3月10日,该
“世界四大博物馆”包括()。[2013年河南真题]
将教学目标分成认知、情感、动作技能三大领域的教育学家是()。
在古代,男子成年后对年龄都有专门的代称,其中五十岁叫做()。
2015年4月22日至24日,亚非领导人会议和万隆会议60周年纪念活动在印度尼西亚首都雅加达举行。本次亚非领导人会议的主题是
Readthefollowingtextsfromanarticleinwhichpeopletalkedaboutsomethingconcerningenvironmentalprotection.Forquestio
最新回复
(
0
)