Not that Bezos isn't a supergeek. It's easy to believe that he had a 4.2 grade point average in his electrical engineering and computer science major at Princeton, meaning that he got a bunch of A-pluses, which count as 4.3 (and are given rarely). Bezos did emerge occasionally from the computer center to take his meals at the Quadrangle "eating club," where one of his future marketing executives, David Risher, was the president. But Risher's only memory of Bezos from that time was that Bezos enjoyed playing "beer pong," a variation on Ping-Pong with cups full of beer placed on either side of the table. Whenever the ball lands in a player's cup, he has to chug a beer.
"The thing about inventing is you have to be both stubborn and flexible. The hard part is figuring out when to be which!"
Just how geeky is Bezos? The man talks in numbered lists. He likes to enumerate the criteria, in order of importance, for every decision he has made -- even why he married his wife. The number-one reason for that particular choice: He wanted someone who would be resourceful enough to get him out of a Third World prison (presumably without pointing a gun at a helicopter pilot).
But lots of businesspeople are highly analytical, even if they reserve that knack for their PowerPoint presentations rather than their romantic life. What really distinguishes Bezos is his harrowing leaps of faith. His best decisions can't be backed up by studies or spreadsheets. He makes nervy gambles on ideas that are just too big and too audacious and too long-term to try out reliably in small-scale tests before charging in. He has introduced innovations that have measurably hurt Amazon's sales and profits, at least in the short run, but he's always driven by the belief that what's good for the customer will ultimately turn out to be in the company's enlightened self-interest. Bezos sees himself as a "change junkie," and the culture he has created is adept at coming up with innovations, but he's also surprisingly blatant and unabashed about copying ideas from competitors. And while Amazon has benefited from Bezos's forceful convictions, he's remarkably good at listening to outside critics and following their advice when they convince him that he's wrong.
The seeming contradictions are what make Bezos so unusual -- and so formidable. He's the rare leader who obsesses over finding small improvements in efficiency at Amazon's huge warehouses right now while sustaining an entrepreneur's grand vision of changing the world over decades. Depending on the situation, he can be hyperrational or full of faith, left- or right-brained, short or long term. That's why he endured even after other 1990s dotcom founders handed over power. "The thing about inventing is you have to be both stubborn and flexible, more or less simultaneously," he says. "Of course, the hard part is figuring out when to be which!" Then comes his earthquake of a laugh.
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