Wonder is the beginning of Wisdom or Success?

This universe does not lack smart people, what this universe lacks is people who are courageous enough to wonder and imagine. Such is the example of Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon which holds a net worth of $1.7 Trillion today. Ever since I have gotten into the e-commerce industry, I too got curious and wanted to find the WHY and HOW of Jeff Bezos’ success. This write will focus on key traits of Jeff Bezos rather than a coherent narrative of his career which of course you can find in various books. 

Apart from being passionately curious, a true innovator, a voracious reader as a child and having a child-like sense of wonder, there is still one and the most important trait that Jeff Bezos carries with him. It is somewhat similar to Steve Jobs’ love for connecting the humanities with technology. 

“Technology alone is not enough. It is technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.” -Steve Jobs

The trifecta—technology, business, and humanities—is what has made Jeff Bezos one the most powerful innovators of our era. Like Steve Jobs, Bezos has changed various industries. Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, has changed how we shop and what we expect of deliveries and shipping. The greater part of US families are members of Amazon Prime, and Amazon delivered ten billion packages in 2018, which is two billion more than the number of individuals on this planet. Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides cloud computing services and applications that empower new businesses and current organizations to make new products and services, similarly as the iPhone App Store opened entirely new pathways for business. Amazon’s Echo has created a new market for smart home speakers, and Amazon Studios is making hit TV shows and motion pictures. Amazon is also ready to disrupt the health industry. Jeff Bezos is additionally building a private space company with the long-term objective of moving heavy industry to space, and he has also gotten ownership of the Washington Post.

As a child, Jeff used to read a lot of science fiction books during summers which strengthened his adventurous mind and actualized in later years his space company, Blue Origin. A recent article featured in Harvard Business Review highlighted some benefits of reading literary fiction such as better decision making and improved emotional intelligence, to name a few. In ‘Managers as Little Prince’, author Khurram Ellahi states “fiction enlarges and blossoms imagination” and sheds light on how creativity gives birth to new ideas. 

Jeff Bezos greatly admired business people who were imaginative and creative. Thomas Edison and Walt Disney were his business heroes. “I’ve always been interested in inventors and invention,” he says. Despite the fact that Edison was the more productive inventor, Bezos came to respect and admire Disney more in light of the daringness and creativity of his vision. 

The curse of specialization has taken away our innate ability to imagine. How can you see the universe with one subject? How can you study yourself with one subject? Have you ever wondered how a 3-D glasses consists of lenses with varying colors, one being Blue and the other one Red? In the beginning, it makes us think it’ll only mess with our eyesight but when you put it on, it allows us to see the world differently and vividly. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom and wealth is one of the many by-products of wisdom, such as the case of Jeff Bezos. 

– Taimoor Bamazai