Amazon Leadership Principle - Invent and Simplify

The Thought - “Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here." As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time”

What is “Invent and Simplify” at Amazon

Invent and Simplify can be read as Invent to Simplify in Amazon. Doing things differently and doing different things, to improve the customer experience is an expectation at each level in Amazon. The idea is to look for your problem solving ability with an intent to simplify things for customers. The key attributes of this leadership principle are:

1. Having the ability to work through the moving and broken processes,

2. Trying a solution that has never been tried before or

3. Replicating an existing solution that can benefit customers of Amazon.

Invent & Simplify Amazon interview questions

• Talk about a simple solution you implemented for a complex problem, how do you know it is complex, how is your solution simple?

• Talk about  the most innovative thing you have done in your recent past experience?

• Have you tried to simplify something for your customer? 

• Talk about an inventive experiment you tried for your customers ? Did you succeed in your attempt? If you failed, what were your learning and what different will you do next time?

• How did you drive your team towards a continuous improvement journey?

Interviewers expectations from your answers on “Invent & Simplify”

• Do you experiment new ways of working

• Are you willing to challenge the status-quo and break conventions

• Do you Encourage innovation environment in your team

• Are you someone who is not afraid of failing while trying a new thing to improve customer experience

• Can you think of long terms benefits of the solution in terms of scalability and simplification

Must have in your answers on “Invent & Simplify”

• You take bigger bets and not afraid of failing, but you always think of how to mitigate the risk of failure

• You always encourage perspectives of team members who try to invent and fosters an environment that guides the team to continuously invent for customers

• You know the entire workflow of your process, the upstream and the downstream process

• You always look at things from the lens of simplification

• You challenge stereotypes and conventions to pave the way for newness and invention