Turning the Flywheel

Books · Business

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Never underestimate the power of a great flywheel, especially when it builds compounding momentum over a very long time. Once you get your flywheel right, you want to renew and extend it for decades

Each component in a flywheel isn't merely a "next action step on a list", but almost an inevitable consequence of the step that came before. If you nail one component, you're propelled into the next component, and the next — almost like a chain reaction

One of the biggest and most common strategic mistakes lies in failing to aggressively and persistently make the most of victories. One reason for this is that leaders become seduced by an endless search for the Next Big Thing. Don't abandon a great flywheel when it would be a superior strategy to sustain, renew, and extend

For a truly great company, the Big Thing is never any specific line of business or product or idea or invention. It is your underlying flywheel architecture, properly conceived

For Amazon, the flywheel below can apply both to books and to web services!

Organizations without the components of a flywheel already in place (like startups) can sometimes jumpstart the process by importing components from flywheels others have built

The nature of the flywheel is that every component depends on every other component. You simply cannot falter on any primary component and sustain momentum