This year, Amazon became the fastest company ever to reach \$100 billion in annual sales. Also this year, Amazon Web Services is reaching \$10 billion in annual sales … doing so at a pace even faster than Amazon achieved that milestone.

今年，Amazon 成为史上最快达到年销售额 1000 亿美元的公司。同样在今年，Amazon Web Services 的年销售额正逼近 100 亿美元……其增速甚至快于 Amazon 当年达到这一里程碑的速度。

What’s going on here? Both were planted as tiny seeds and both have grown organically without significant acquisitions into meaningful and large businesses, quickly. Superficially, the two could hardly be more different. One serves consumers and the other serves enterprises. One is famous for brown boxes and the other for APIs. Is it only a coincidence that two such dissimilar offerings grew so quickly under one roof? Luck plays an outsized role in every endeavor, and I can assure you we’ve had a bountiful supply. But beyond that, there is a connection between these two businesses. Under the surface, the two are not so different after all. They share a distinctive organizational culture that cares deeply about and acts with conviction on a small number of principles. I’m talking about customer obsession rather than competitor obsession, eagerness to invent and pioneer, willingness to fail, the patience to think long-term, and the taking of professional pride in operational excellence. Through that lens, AWS and Amazon retail are very similar indeed.

这究竟是怎么回事？两者最初都只是微小的种子，都在几乎没有重大收购的情况下有机生长，迅速成为意义重大且规模庞大的业务。从表面上看，这两者几乎截然不同：一个面向消费者，另一个服务企业；一个因棕色纸箱而闻名，另一个则以 API 著称。如此迥异的两项产品在同一屋檐下成长如此迅速，仅仅是巧合吗？运气在一切事业中都扮演着过大的角色，我可以向你保证，我们的运气可谓丰沛。但除此之外，这两项业务之间还存在联系。深层次看，两者其实并没有那么不同。它们共享一种独特的组织文化，这种文化对少数原则高度在乎并坚决付诸行动。我说的是以客户为中心而非竞争对手为中心、乐于发明和开拓、愿意失败、耐心进行长期思考，以及对卓越运营怀有职业自豪。从这个角度看，AWS 与 Amazon 零售业务确实十分相似。

A word about corporate cultures: for better or for worse, they are enduring, stable, hard to change. They can be a source of advantage or disadvantage. You can write down your corporate culture, but when you do so, you’re discovering it, uncovering it – not creating it. It is created slowly over time by the people and by events – by the stories of past success and failure that become a deep part of the company lore. If it’s a distinctive culture, it will fit certain people like a custom-made glove. The reason cultures are so stable in time is because people self-select. Someone energized by competitive zeal may select and be happy in one culture, while someone who loves to pioneer and invent may choose another. The world, thankfully, is full of many high-performing, highly distinctive corporate cultures. We never claim that our approach is the right one – just that it’s ours – and over the last two decades, we’ve collected a large group of like-minded people. Folks who find our approach energizing and meaningful.

关于企业文化，需要说明一点：无论好坏，它们都是持久、稳定且难以改变的。它们既可能成为优势，也可能成为劣势。你可以把企业文化写下来，但当你这么做时，你是在发现、揭示它——而不是创造它。它是由人和事件——由过去成功与失败的故事——在漫长时光中慢慢形成，成为公司传说中的深层部分。如果文化足够独特，它会像量身定制的手套一样契合某些人。文化随时间保持稳定的原因在于人会自我选择。一个因竞争激情而充满能量的人可能会选择并满意于某种文化，而热爱开拓和发明的人可能会选择另一种。幸运的是，世界上充满了许多高绩效、极具特色的企业文化。我们从未声称我们的方法是唯一正确的——只是说它属于我们——在过去二十年中，我们聚集了一大批志同道合的人，他们认为我们的方法振奋人心且意义重大。

One area where I think we are especially distinctive is failure. I believe we are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!), and failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there. Outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is usually right. Given a ten percent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you’re still going to be wrong nine times out of ten. We all know that if you swing for the fences, you’re going to strike out a lot, but you’re also going to hit some home runs. The difference between baseball and business, however, is that baseball has a truncated outcome distribution. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate, you can score 1,000 runs. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it’s important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments.

我认为我们最与众不同的一个方面是对失败的态度。我相信这里是世界上最适合失败的地方（我们有充足的练习！），而失败与发明是分不开的双生子。要发明就必须实验，如果你预先知道它一定会成功，那就不是实验。大多数大型组织都接受发明的理念，但不愿意忍受为此所必需的一连串失败实验。超额回报往往来自于反向赌注，而常识通常是正确的。如果有 10% 的概率获得 100 倍的回报，你每次都应该下注。但十次里你仍会有九次错误。我们都知道，若想击出本垒打，就得多次挥棒落空，但也会击出几记漂亮的全垒打。然而，棒球与商业的区别在于棒球的结果分布是被截断的：无论你击球多么精准，最多只能得到四分。在商业中，偶尔当你站上击球区时，你可以得到 1000 分。这种长尾收益分布正是需要大胆行动的原因。巨大的赢家可以为众多实验买单。

AWS, Marketplace and Prime are all examples of bold bets at Amazon that worked, and we’re fortunate to have those three big pillars. They have helped us grow into a large company, and there are certain things that only large companies can do. With a tip of the hat to our Seattle neighbors, no matter how good an entrepreneur you are, you’re not going to build an all-composite 787 in your garage startup – not one you’d want to fly in anyway. Used well, our scale enables us to build services for customers that we could otherwise never even contemplate. But also, if we’re not vigilant and thoughtful, size could slow us down and diminish our inventiveness.

AWS、Marketplace 和 Prime 都是 Amazon 大胆实践并取得成功的案例，我们很幸运拥有这三大支柱。它们帮助我们成长为一家大型公司，而只有大公司才能完成某些事情。向我们 Seattle 的邻居致敬——无论你多么杰出的创业者，都不可能在车库里的初创企业中造出一架全复合材料的 787，至少不会是一架你敢乘坐的。善用规模，我们就能为客户打造此前甚至无法想象的服务；但若不保持警惕和深思，规模也可能拖慢我们的脚步，削弱我们的创新能力。

As I meet with teams across Amazon, I am continually amazed at the passion, intelligence and creativity on display. Our teams accomplished a lot in the last year, and I’d like to share a few of the highlights of our efforts to nourish and globalize our three big offerings – Prime, Marketplace and AWS. And while I’ll focus on those three, I assure you that we also remain hard at work on finding a fourth.

当我与 Amazon 各团队会面时，总会被他们展现出的激情、智慧与创造力所震撼。过去一年，我们取得了丰硕成果，在培育并全球化三大业务——Prime、Marketplace 和 AWS——方面尤为突出。虽然我将重点放在这三项上，但请相信，我们仍在努力寻找第四大支柱。

Prime

We want Prime to be such a good value, you’d be irresponsible not to be a member.

我们希望 Prime 的价值如此之高，以至于你若不是会员，就显得有失责任。

We’ve grown Prime two-day delivery selection from 1 million items to over 30 million, added Sunday Delivery, and introduced Free Same-Day Delivery on hundreds of thousands of products for customers in more than 35 cities around the world. We’ve added music, photo storage, the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and streaming films and TV.

我们已将 Prime 两日达商品从 100 万件扩展到逾 3000 万件，新增周日配送，并在全球 35 多座城市为数十万种商品推出免费当日达服务。我们还增加了音乐、照片存储、Kindle Owners’ Lending Library，以及电影和电视流媒体。

Prime Now offers members one-hour delivery on an important subset of selection, and was launched only 111 days after it was dreamed up. In that time, a small team built a customer-facing app, secured a location for an urban warehouse, determined which 25,000 items to sell, got those items stocked, recruited and on-boarded new staff, tested, iterated, designed new software for internal use – both a warehouse management system and a driver-facing app – and launched in time for the holidays. Today, just 15 months after that first city launch, Prime Now is serving members in more than 30 cities around the world.

Prime Now 为会员提供精选商品的一小时送达服务，并在构思后仅 111 天就正式上线。在这期间，一支小团队构建了面向客户的应用、锁定了城市仓库选址、确定了 25,000 款商品、完成备货、招聘并培训新员工，进行测试与迭代，为内部使用设计了新的仓库管理系统和司机端应用，并赶在假日季前推出。如今，距离首城上线仅 15 个月，Prime Now 已在全球 30 多座城市为会员服务。

Prime Video offers exclusives from some of the world’s most passionate storytellers. We want brilliant creators like Jill Soloway, Jason Schwartzman and Spike Lee to take risks and push boundaries. Our original series have already earned more than 120 nominations and won nearly 60 awards, including Golden Globe and Emmy awards. Many of these are stories that might never have been told in the traditional linear programming model. In the pipeline and coming soon are new series and movies from creators like Jeremy Clarkson, David E. Kelley, Woody Allen and Kenneth Lonergan.

Prime Video 为会员带来全球最富激情讲述者的独家内容。我们希望 Jill Soloway、Jason Schwartzman 和 Spike Lee 等杰出创作者敢于冒险、突破边界。我们的原创剧集已获得 120 多项提名，并赢得近 60 项大奖，包括 Golden Globe 和 Emmy。许多故事若置于传统线性节目模式，或许永无出头之日。正在制作并即将上线的，还有 Jeremy Clarkson、David E. Kelley、Woody Allen 和 Kenneth Lonergan 等创作者的新剧集与电影。

The Man in the High Castle, based on the Philip K. Dick novel, explores an alternate history where the U.S. lost World War II. It debuted on Prime Video on November 20th and in four weeks became our most-viewed show – receiving acclaim from critics like “...Amazon has the best new drama of the season in The Man in the High Castle” and “The Man in the High Castle accomplishes so much, where most new broadcast TV dramas these days don’t even try.”

《The Man in the High Castle》改编自 Philip K. Dick 的同名小说，描绘了一个美国在二战中战败的另类历史。该剧于 11 月 20 日在 Prime Video 首播，仅四周就成为我们观看次数最多的节目，并获评论家盛赞：“……Amazon 凭借《The Man in the High Castle》拿下本季最佳新剧”，以及“《The Man in the High Castle》成就斐然，而当下大多数新播出的电视剧情甚至不敢尝试”。

These shows are great for customers, and they feed the Prime flywheel – Prime members who watch Prime Video are more likely to convert from a free trial to a paid membership, and more likely to renew their annual subscriptions.

这些节目深受客户喜爱，并为 Prime 飞轮注入动力——观看 Prime Video 的 Prime 会员更有可能从免费试用转为付费会员，也更有可能续订年度会员。

Finally, our first ever Prime Day surpassed all our expectations – more new members tried Prime that day than any other day in our history. Worldwide order growth increased 266% over the same day the year before, and sellers whose products are Prime-eligible through FBA saw record-breaking sales – with growth nearing 300%.

最后，我们首次举办的 Prime Day 远超所有预期——那一天尝试 Prime 的新会员数量创下历史新高。全球订单量较去年同期增长 266%，通过 FBA 获得 Prime 资格的卖家更是创下破纪录的销量，增幅接近 300%。

Prime has become an all-you-can-eat, physical-digital hybrid that members love. Membership grew 51% last year – including 47% growth in the U.S. and even faster internationally – and there are now tens of millions of members worldwide. There’s a good chance you’re already one of them, but if you’re not – please be responsible – join Prime.

Prime 已成为会员钟爱的“自助式”线上线下混合服务。去年会员数量增长 51%——其中美国增长 47%，国际增长更快——目前全球会员已达数千万。很可能你已经是其中一员，但如果还不是——为了负责任起见——请加入 Prime。

Marketplace

We took two big swings and missed – with Auctions and zShops – before we launched Marketplace over 15 years ago. We learned from our failures and stayed stubborn on the vision, and today close to 50% of units sold on Amazon are sold by third-party sellers. Marketplace is great for customers because it adds unique selection, and it’s great for sellers – there are over 70,000 entrepreneurs with sales of more than \$100,000 a year selling on Amazon, and they’ve created over 600,000 new jobs. With FBA, that flywheel spins faster because sellers’ inventory becomes Prime-eligible – Prime becomes more valuable for members, and sellers sell more.

在推出 Marketplace 之前的 15 年里，我们曾两次重击却失手——Auctions 和 zShops。我们从失败中学习，并始终坚持愿景，如今 Amazon 上近 50% 的销量来自第三方卖家。Marketplace 不仅为客户带来独特的商品选择，也惠及卖家——年销售额超过 10 万美元的创业者超过 70,000 名，他们已创造逾 600,000 个新工作岗位。有了 FBA，这个飞轮转得更快，因为卖家的库存获得 Prime 资格——Prime 对会员更具价值，卖家也能卖出更多。

This year, we created a new program called Seller Fulfilled Prime. We invited sellers who are able to meet a high bar for shipping speed and consistency in service to be part of the Prime program and ship their own orders at Prime speed directly. Those sellers have already seen a significant bump in sales, and the program has led to hundreds of thousands of additional items that are available to Prime customers via free two-day or next-day shipping in the U.S., U.K. and Germany.

今年，我们推出了名为 Seller Fulfilled Prime 的新计划。我们邀请能够满足高标准发货速度和服务一致性的卖家加入 Prime 计划，直接以 Prime 速度自行配送订单。这些卖家已经看到销售显著提升，该计划已为 Prime 客户在美国、英国和德国新增数十万件可享免费两日达或次日达的商品。

We also created the Amazon Lending program to help sellers grow. Since the program launched, we’ve provided aggregate funding of over \$1.5 billion to micro, small and medium businesses across the U.S., U.K. and Japan through short-term loans, with a total outstanding loan balance of about \$400 million. Stephen Aarstol, surfer and owner of Tower Paddle Boards, is one beneficiary. His business has become one of the fastest-growing companies in San Diego, in part with a little help from Amazon Lending. Click-to-cash access to capital helps these small enterprises grow, benefits customers with greater selection, and benefits Amazon since our marketplace revenue grows along with the sellers’ sales. We hope to expand Amazon Lending and are now working on ways to partner with banks so they can use their expertise to take and manage the bulk of the credit risk.

我们还创建了 Amazon Lending 计划以帮助卖家成长。自项目启动以来，我们已通过短期贷款向美国、英国和日本的微型、小型和中型企业累计提供超过 15 亿美元资金，当前贷款余额约 4 亿美元。冲浪爱好者兼 Tower Paddle Boards 所有者 Stephen Aarstol 就是受益者之一。在 Amazon Lending 的帮助下，他的企业已成为圣迭戈增长最快的公司之一。便捷的 click-to-cash 融资帮助这些小企业发展，为客户带来更丰富的选择，也让 Amazon 受益，因为随着卖家销售额增长，我们的 Marketplace 收入亦水涨船高。我们希望扩展 Amazon Lending，并正研究与银行合作的方式，让它们利用专业能力承担并管理大部分信用风险。

In addition to nourishing our big offerings, we work to globalize them. Our Marketplace creates opportunities for sellers anywhere to reach buyers around the world. In the past, many sellers would limit their customer base to their home country due to the practical challenges of selling internationally. To globalize Marketplace and expand the opportunities available to sellers, we built selling tools that empowered entrepreneurs in 172 countries to reach customers in 189 countries last year. These cross-border sales are now nearly a quarter of all third-party units sold on Amazon. To make this possible, we translated hundreds of millions of product listings and provided conversion services among 44 currencies. Even small and niche sellers can now tap into our global customer base and global logistics network. The end result is very different from sellers handling their own one-at-a-time, cross-border fulfillment. Plugable Technologies’ CEO, Bernie Thompson, put it this way: “It really changes the paradigm when you’re able to ship the goods in bulk to a warehouse in Europe or Japan and have those goods be fulfilled in one day or two days.”

除了培育我们的主要业务，我们也致力于让它们全球化。我们的 Marketplace 为世界各地的卖家创造了机会，使他们能够触达全球买家。过去，由于跨境销售的实际挑战，许多卖家将客户群限制在本国。为了让 Marketplace 实现全球化并扩大卖家可获得的机会，我们构建了销售工具，使 172 个国家的企业家去年能够向 189 个国家的客户销售商品。这些跨境销售如今占 Amazon 第三方总销量的近四分之一。为实现这一目标，我们翻译了数以亿计的商品信息，并在 44 种货币之间提供转换服务。即便是规模很小、面向细分市场的卖家，也能利用我们的全球客户基础和全球物流网络。这一结果与卖家自行一件件进行跨境履约大不相同。Plugable Technologies 的 CEO Bernie Thompson 如此形容：“当你能够把货物整批发运到欧洲或日本的仓库，并在一天或两天内完成履约时，这确实改变了范式。”

India is another example of how we globalize an offering like Marketplace through customer obsession and a passion for invention. Last year we ran a program called Amazon Chai Cart where we deployed three-wheeled mobile carts to navigate in a city’s business districts, serve tea, water and lemon juice to small business owners and teach them about selling online. In a period of four months, the team traveled 15,280 km across 31 cities, served 37,200 cups of tea and engaged with over 10,000 sellers. Through this program and other conversations with sellers, we found out there was a lot of interest in selling online, but that sellers struggled with the belief that the process was time-consuming, tedious and complex. So, we invented Amazon Tatkal, which enables small businesses to get online in less than 60 minutes. Amazon Tatkal is a specially designed studio-on-wheels offering a suite of launch services including registration, imaging and cataloguing services, as well as basic seller training mechanisms. Since its launch on February 17th, we have reached sellers in 25 cities.

印度是我们如何通过以客户为中心和对发明的热情将 Marketplace 等业务全球化的又一个例子。去年，我们开展了名为 Amazon Chai Cart 的项目，使用三轮移动货车穿梭城市商业区，为小企业主提供茶、水和柠檬汁，并向他们讲解在线销售。四个月内，团队行驶了 15,280 公里，遍访 31 座城市，送出 37,200 杯茶，并与超过 10,000 名卖家交流。通过此项目及与卖家的其他沟通，我们发现大家对在线销售兴趣浓厚，但普遍认为流程耗时、繁琐且复杂。于是，我们发明了 Amazon Tatkal，使小企业得以在不到 60 分钟内上线。Amazon Tatkal 是专门设计的“移动工作室”，提供一揽子启动服务，包括注册、拍照和目录创建，以及基础卖家培训。自 2 月 17 日推出以来，我们已在 25 座城市接触到卖家。

We’re also globalizing Fulfillment by Amazon, adapting the service to local customer needs. In India, we launched a program called Seller Flex to combine Amazon’s logistics capabilities with sellers’ selection at the local neighborhood level. Sellers set aside a part of their warehouse for storing items to be sold on Amazon, and we configure it as a fulfillment center in our network that can receive and fulfill customer orders. Our team provides guidance on warehouse layout, IT and operational infrastructure, and trains the seller on standard operating procedures to be followed onsite. We’ve now launched 25 operational Seller Flex sites across ten cities.

我们还在全球推广 Fulfillment by Amazon，并根据当地客户需求对服务进行调整。在印度，我们推出了名为 Seller Flex 的项目，将 Amazon 的物流能力与社区层面的卖家选品结合起来。卖家在自有仓库中划出一部分，用于存放在 Amazon 上销售的商品，我们将其配置为网络中的履约中心，可接收并处理客户订单。我们的团队为卖家提供仓库布局、IT 与运营基础设施的指导，并培训其遵循现场标准操作流程。目前，我们已在 10 座城市启用 25 个 Seller Flex 运营站点。

Amazon Web Services

Just over 10 years ago, AWS started in the U.S. with its first major service, a simple storage service. Today, AWS offers more than 70 services for compute, storage, databases, analytics, mobile, Internet of Things, and enterprise applications. We also offer 33 Availability Zones across 12 geographic regions worldwide, with another five regions and 11 Availability Zones in Canada, China, India, the U.S., and the U.K. to be available in the coming year. AWS started with developers and startups, and now is used by more than a million customers from organizations of every size across nearly every industry – companies like Pinterest, Airbnb, GE, Enel, Capital One, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Philips, Hess, Adobe, McDonald’s, and Time Inc.

十多年前，AWS 在美国推出首个核心服务——简单存储服务。如今，AWS 提供超过 70 项服务，涵盖计算、存储、数据库、分析、移动、物联网以及企业应用。我们在全球 12 个地理区域运营 33 个可用区，并计划在来年于加拿大、中国、印度、美国和英国再新增 5 个区域和 11 个可用区。AWS 最初面向开发者和初创企业，如今已被来自几乎所有行业、各种规模的逾百万家机构使用——包括 Pinterest、Airbnb、GE、Enel、Capital One、Intuit、Johnson & Johnson、Philips、Hess、Adobe、McDonald’s 以及 Time Inc. 等公司。

AWS is bigger than Amazon.com was at 10 years old, growing at a faster rate, and – most noteworthy in my view – the pace of innovation continues to accelerate – we announced 722 significant new features and services in 2015, a 40% increase over 2014.

AWS 的规模已超越 Amazon.com 十周年时的体量，增长速度更快，而且——在我看来最为显著的是——创新步伐仍在加速。仅在 2015 年，我们就发布了 722 项重要的新功能和服务，较 2014 年增长 40%。

Many characterized AWS as a bold – and unusual – bet when we started. “What does this have to do with selling books?” We could have stuck to the knitting. I’m glad we didn’t. Or did we? Maybe the knitting has as much to do with our approach as the arena. AWS is customer obsessed, inventive and experimental, long-term oriented, and cares deeply about operational excellence.

当初，许多人将 AWS 视为一次大胆而不同寻常的押注：“这跟卖书有什么关系？”我们本可以坚守原有模式。我很庆幸我们没有——又或许，我们依旧坚守？也许“本业”与我们的方法同样相关。AWS 以客户为中心，富于创新与实验精神，着眼长远，并高度重视卓越运营。

Given 10 years and many iterations, that approach has allowed AWS to rapidly expand into the world’s most comprehensive, widely adopted cloud service. As with our retail business, AWS is made up of many small teams with single-threaded owners, enabling rapid innovation. The team rolls out new functionality almost daily across 70 services, and that new functionality just “shows up” for customers – there’s no upgrading.

经过十年的多次迭代，这一方法使 AWS 得以迅速扩展，成为全球最全面、被最广泛采用的云服务。与我们的零售业务一样，AWS 由众多拥有单一职能的“小而专”团队组成，从而实现快速创新。团队几乎每天都在 70 项服务中推出新功能，而这些新功能会自动“呈现”给客户——无需升级。

Many companies describe themselves as customer-focused, but few walk the walk. Most big technology companies are competitor focused. They see what others are doing, and then work to fast follow. In contrast, 90 to 95% of what we build in AWS is driven by what customers tell us they want. A good example is our new database engine, Amazon Aurora. Customers have been frustrated by the proprietary nature, high cost, and licensing terms of traditional, commercial-grade database providers. And while many companies have started moving toward more open engines like MySQL and Postgres, they often struggle to get the performance they need. Customers asked us if we could eliminate that inconvenient trade-off, and that’s why we built Aurora. It has commercial-grade durability and availability, is fully compatible with MySQL, has up to 5 times better performance than the typical MySQL implementation, but is 1/10th the price of the traditional, commercial-grade database engines. This has struck a resonant chord with customers, and Aurora is the fastest-growing service in the history of AWS. Nearly this same story could be told about Redshift, our managed data warehouse service, which is the second fastest growing service in AWS history – both small and large companies are moving their data warehouses to Redshift.

许多公司自称以客户为中心，但真正身体力行的寥寥无几。大多数大型科技公司以竞争对手为焦点，观察他人动向，然后迅速跟进。相比之下，我们在 AWS 所构建的功能有 90% 至 95% 源于客户需求。新数据库引擎 Amazon Aurora 就是一个极佳例子。客户一直对传统商用级数据库提供商的专有性、高成本及许可条款感到沮丧。虽然不少公司开始转向 MySQL、Postgres 等更开放的引擎，但常常难以获得所需性能。客户询问我们能否消除这种不便的权衡，这就是我们构建 Aurora 的原因。Aurora 具备商用级的耐久性和可用性，与 MySQL 完全兼容，性能是典型 MySQL 部署的 5 倍，但成本仅为传统商用级数据库引擎的十分之一。这与客户产生了强烈共鸣，Aurora 已成为 AWS 历史上增长最快的服务。几乎同样的故事也发生在我们的托管数据仓库服务 Redshift 上——它是 AWS 历史上第二快的增长服务，无论大小公司，都在将数据仓库迁移到 Redshift。

Our approach to pricing is also driven by our customer-centric culture – we’ve dropped prices 51 times, in many cases before there was any competitive pressure to do so. In addition to price reductions, we’ve also continued to launch new lower cost services like Aurora, Redshift, QuickSight (our new Business Intelligence service), EC2 Container Service (our new compute container service), and Lambda (our pioneering server-less computing capability), while extending our services to offer a range of highly cost-effective options for running just about every type of application or IT use case imaginable. We even roll out and continuously improve services like Trusted Advisor, which alerts customers when they can save money – resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in savings for our customers. I’m pretty sure we’re the only IT vendor telling customers how to stop spending money with us.

我们的定价策略同样源于以客户为中心的文化——到目前为止，我们已 51 次降价，许多情况下是在任何竞争压力出现之前就主动调价。除了降价，我们还不断推出低成本的新服务，如 Aurora、Redshift、QuickSight（我们的新商业智能服务）、EC2 Container Service（新的计算容器服务）以及 Lambda（开创性的无服务器计算能力），同时扩展服务范围，为几乎所有可想象的应用或 IT 场景提供极具成本效益的选项。我们甚至推出并持续改进 Trusted Advisor 等服务，提醒客户何时可以节省费用——已为客户节省数亿美元。我几乎可以确定，我们是唯一一个主动告诉客户如何少花钱的 IT 供应商。

Whether you are a startup founded yesterday or a business that has been around for 140 years, the cloud is providing all of us with unbelievable opportunities to reinvent our businesses, add new customer experiences, redeploy capital to fuel growth, increase security, and do all of this so much faster than before. MLB Advanced Media is an example of an AWS customer that is constantly reinventing the customer experience. MLB’s Statcast tracking technology is a new feature for baseball fans that measures the position of each player, the baserunners, and the ball as they move during every play on the field, giving viewers on any screen access to empirical data that answers age-old questions like “what could have happened if…” while also bringing new questions to life. Turning baseball into rocket science, Statcast uses a missile radar system to measure every pitched ball’s movements more than 2,000 times per second, streams and collects data in real-time through Amazon Kinesis (our service for processing real-time streaming data), stores the data on Amazon S3, and then performs analytics in Amazon EC2. The suite of services will generate nearly 7 TB of raw statistical data per game and up to 17 PB per season, shedding quantitative light on age-old, but never verified, baseball pearls of wisdom like “never slide into first.”

无论您是昨日成立的初创公司，还是拥有 140 年历史的企业，云都为我们提供了前所未有的机会，重新定义业务、带来全新的客户体验、重新部署资本以推动增长、提升安全性，而且这一切的实现速度远超以往。MLB Advanced Media 是不断重塑客户体验的 AWS 用户典型。MLB 的 Statcast 跟踪技术为棒球迷提供了一项新功能，可在每一次比赛中测量每位球员、跑垒员和棒球的实时位置，为任何屏幕前的观众提供实证数据，解答诸如“如果……会怎样”之类的老问题，并引发新的讨论。Statcast 将棒球变成了火箭科学：它使用导弹雷达系统，每秒测量投球运动 2,000 余次，通过 Amazon Kinesis（我们的实时流数据处理服务）实时传输并收集数据，将数据存储在 Amazon S3，然后在 Amazon EC2 上进行分析。该服务套件每场比赛可生成近 7 TB 原始统计数据，每赛季高达 17 PB，从数量层面揭示诸如“冲向一垒决不能滑垒”这类久未证实的棒球格言背后的真相。

About seven years ago, Netflix announced that they were going to move all their applications to the cloud. Netflix chose AWS because it provided them with the greatest scale and the broadest set of services and features. Netflix recently completed their cloud migration, and stories like theirs are becoming increasingly common as companies like Infor, Intuit, and Time Inc., have made plans to move all of their applications to AWS.

大约七年前，Netflix 宣布将把其所有应用迁移至云端。Netflix 之所以选择 AWS，是因为 AWS 提供了最大的规模以及最广泛的服务与功能。Netflix 近期已完成云迁移，而类似的故事越来越常见——Infor、Intuit 和 Time Inc. 等公司也已计划将其全部应用迁移到 AWS。

AWS is already good enough today to attract more than 1 million customers, and the service is only going to get better from here. As the team continues their rapid pace of innovation, we’ll offer more and more capabilities to let builders build unfettered, it will get easier and easier to collect, store and analyze data, we’ll continue to add more geographic locations, and we’ll continue to see growth in mobile and “connected” device applications. Over time, it’s likely that most companies will choose not to run their own data centers, opting for the cloud instead.

如今的 AWS 已足够优秀，吸引了逾百万客户，并且服务还将在此基础上不断完善。随着团队持续快速创新，我们将提供越来越多的功能，让构建者能够无拘无束地开发；收集、存储和分析数据将变得愈发轻松；我们将不断新增地理区域，同时在移动和“连接”设备应用方面继续实现增长。随着时间推移，绝大多数公司很可能会选择不再自建数据中心，而是转向云端。

Invention Machine

创新机器

We want to be a large company that’s also an invention machine. We want to combine the extraordinary customer-serving capabilities that are enabled by size with the speed of movement, nimbleness, and risk-acceptance mentality normally associated with entrepreneurial start-ups.

我们希望成为一家大型公司，同时也能像一台创新机器。我们希望将规模所赋予的卓越客户服务能力，与初创企业通常具备的行动迅捷、灵活性和敢于承担风险的心态结合起来。

Can we do it? I’m optimistic. We have a good start on it, and I think our culture puts us in a position to achieve the goal. But I don’t think it’ll be easy. There are some subtle traps that even high-performing large organizations can fall into as a matter of course, and we’ll have to learn as an institution how to guard against them. One common pitfall for large organizations – one that hurts speed and inventiveness – is “one-size-fits-all” decision making.

我们能做到吗？我很乐观。我们已经有了良好的开端，而且我认为我们的文化让我们有能力实现这一目标。但我并不认为这会轻而易举。即使是表现出色的大型组织，也可能自然而然地落入一些隐蔽的陷阱，我们必须作为一个整体学会如何防范这些陷阱。大型组织的一个常见陷阱——它会削弱速度和创新力——就是“一刀切”的决策方式。

Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions. But most decisions aren’t like that – they are changeable, reversible – they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups.

As organizations get larger, there seems to be a tendency to use the heavy-weight Type 1 decision-making process on most decisions, including many Type 2 decisions. The end result of this is slowness, unthoughtful risk aversion, failure to experiment sufficiently, and consequently diminished invention.1 We’ll have to figure out how to fight that tendency.

随着组织规模扩大，人们似乎倾向于对大多数决策——包括许多本属于 Type 2 的决策——采用繁琐的 Type 1 决策流程。其最终结果就是行动迟缓、过度规避风险、缺乏足够实验，因而抑制创新。¹ 我们必须想办法对抗这种倾向。

And one-size-fits-all thinking will turn out to be only one of the pitfalls. We’ll work hard to avoid it… and any other large organization maladies we can identify.

而“一刀切”思维只会是众多陷阱中的一个。我们将努力避免它……以及我们能够识别出的其他任何大型组织常见病。

Sustainability and Social Invention

可持续发展与社会创新

Our growth has happened fast. Twenty years ago, I was driving boxes to the post office in my Chevy Blazer and dreaming of a forklift. In absolute numbers (as opposed to percentages), the past few years have been especially significant. We’ve grown from 30,000 employees in 2010 to more than 230,000 now. We’re a bit like parents who look around one day and realize their kids are grown – you blink and it happens.

我们的成长发生得非常迅速。二十年前，我还在开着 Chevy Blazer 把包裹送到邮局，并梦想着拥有一台叉车。从绝对数字（而非百分比）来看，过去几年尤为显著：我们的员工数量已从 2010 年的 30,000 人增长到如今的 230,000 多人。我们有点像某天环顾四周突然发现孩子已经长大的父母——眨眼之间，一切就发生了。

One thing that’s exciting about our current scale is that we can put our inventive culture to work on moving the needle on sustainability and social issues.

我们目前规模令人振奋的一点在于，能够将我们的创新文化用于推动可持续发展和社会议题的进步。

Two years ago we set a long-term goal to use 100% renewable energy across our global AWS infrastructure. We’ve since announced four significant wind and solar farms that will deliver 1.6 million megawatt hours per year of additional renewable energy into the electric grids that supply AWS data centers. Amazon Wind Farm Fowler Ridge has already come online. We reached 25% sustainable energy use across AWS last year, are on track to reach 40% this year, and are working on goals that will cover all of Amazon’s facilities around the world, including our fulfillment centers.

两年前，我们设定了一个长期目标：在全球 AWS 基础设施中实现 100% 可再生能源。自那以后，我们已宣布建设四座大型风能和太阳能发电场，每年将为供电 AWS 数据中心的电网额外输送 160 万兆瓦时的可再生能源。Amazon Wind Farm Fowler Ridge 已经投运。去年，我们在 AWS 实现了 25% 的可持续能源使用，今年有望达到 40%，并正制定目标，覆盖 Amazon 全球所有设施，包括我们的履约中心。

We’ll keep expanding our efforts in areas like packaging, where our culture of invention led to a big winner – the Frustration-Free Packaging program. Seven years ago we introduced the initiative with 19 products. Today, there are more than 400,000 globally. In 2015, the program eliminated tens of millions of pounds of excess packaging material. Frustration-Free Packaging is a customer delighter because the packages are easier to open. It’s good for the planet because it creates less waste. And it’s good for shareholders because, with tighter packaging, we ship less “air” and save on transportation costs.

我们将继续在包装等领域扩大努力；正是在这一领域，我们的创新文化催生了一个重大成果——Frustration-Free Packaging 计划。七年前，我们推出该计划时仅涵盖 19 款产品，如今全球已有超过 400,000 款产品参与。2015 年，该计划消除了数千万磅过度包装材料。Frustration-Free Packaging 让顾客更满意，因为包装更易开启；它对地球有益，因为减少了废弃物；对股东也有好处，因为更紧凑的包装意味着我们运输的“空气”更少，节省了运输成本。

We also continue to pioneer new programs for employees – like Career Choice, Leave Share, and Ramp Back. Career Choice pre-pays 95% of tuition for courses that teach in-demand skills, regardless of whether those skills are relevant to a career at Amazon. We’ll pay for nursing certifications, airplane mechanic courses, and many others. We’re building classrooms with glass walls right in our fulfillment centers as a way to encourage employees to participate in the program and to make it easy. We see the impact through stories like Sharie Warmack – a single mother of eight who worked in one of our Phoenix fulfillment centers. Career Choice paid for Sharie to get licensed to drive an 18-wheeler. Sharie worked hard, passed her tests, and she’s now a long-haul driver for Schneider Trucking – and loving it. This coming year, we’re launching a program to teach other interested companies the benefits of Career Choice and how to implement it.

我们还在继续为员工开创新项目——例如 Career Choice、Leave Share 和 Ramp Back。Career Choice 预付 95% 的学费，用于教授市场紧缺技能的课程，无论这些技能是否与在 Amazon 的职业相关。我们会支付护理资格认证、飞机机械课程以及其他许多课程的费用。我们正在履约中心内建造玻璃隔墙教室，鼓励员工参与该项目并使其更为便捷。我们通过诸如 Sharie Warmack 的故事看到了项目的影响——她是 8 个孩子的单身母亲，曾在我们位于凤凰城的一个履约中心工作。Career Choice 为 Sharie 支付费用，使她获得驾驶 18 轮卡车的执照。Sharie 努力学习，通过了考试，现在她已成为 Schneider Trucking 的长途司机，并且非常喜欢这份工作。明年，我们将推出一个项目，向其他感兴趣的公司介绍 Career Choice 的益处及其实施方法。

Leave Share and Ramp Back are programs that give new parents flexibility with their growing families. Leave Share lets employees share their Amazon paid leave with their spouse or domestic partner if their spouse’s employer doesn’t offer paid leave. Ramp Back gives birth mothers additional control over the pace at which they return to work. Just as with our health care plan, these benefits are egalitarian – they’re the same for our fulfillment center and customer service employees as they are for our most senior executives.

Leave Share 和 Ramp Back 给予新晋父母在家庭成长过程中的灵活性。如果员工的配偶所在雇主未提供带薪假期，Leave Share 允许员工将自己的 Amazon 带薪假期分享给配偶或伴侣。Ramp Back 让产后母亲对返回工作的节奏拥有更多自主权。与我们的医疗计划一样，这些福利保持平等——履约中心和客服员工与最高层高管享受同等待遇。

Renewable energy, Frustration-Free Packaging, Career Choice, Leave Share, and Ramp Back are examples of a culture that embraces invention and long-term thinking. It’s very energizing to think that our scale provides opportunities to create impact in these areas.

可再生能源、Frustration-Free Packaging、Career Choice、Leave Share 以及 Ramp Back，都体现了拥抱创新与长期思考的企业文化。想到我们的规模能够在这些领域产生影响，令人倍感振奋。

I can tell you it’s a great joy for me to get to work every day with a team of such smart, imaginative, and passionate people. On behalf of all of us at Amazon, thank you for your support as shareholders. As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. Our approach remains the same, and it’s still Day 1.

每天能够与这样一支聪慧、富有想象力且充满激情的团队共事，是我莫大的快乐。我谨代表 Amazon 全体同仁，感谢各位股东的支持。按照惯例，随信附上我们 1997 年的原始致股东信副本。我们的理念始终如一，仍然是 Day 1。