The Imperfectionists

Introduction: Becoming an Imperfectionist

If you are an Amazon customer, chances are you have encountered household names such as Amazon Fresh, Amazon Prime, Audible, and Zappos. It's less likely that you would have noted the baby steps Amazon took to expand beyond its core business into consumer financial services. The acquisition of TextPayMe, the investment in Bill Me Later, the hiring of a team from GoPayGo, and the launch of a remote card payment device, Amazon Local Register, were modest moves that involved only small financial outlay and attracted relatively little attention at the time. They also all ended in apparent failure, with TextPayMe (rebranded Amazon Web Pay) closing in 2014, Local Register withdrawing from the market in the face of competition from Square, and Bill Me Later being acquired by rival PayPal.

Yet today Amazon is a powerhouse in consumer finance, boasting a 24% user share in the United States for its pan-economy Amazon Pay service, and is positioned to develop further as a global finance player. How did the company craft success at scale from a series of pint-sized and seemingly unpromising moves? The answer is that Amazon is an imperfectionist, a concept we've developed over several decades of helping companies and nonprofits, and one that we believe is vital for all organizations, big and small, striving to prosper in today's uniquely uncertain economic environment.

On the face of it being an imperfectionist doesn't sound like a good thing. We ...