2021年Amazon致股東信：應對COVID挑戰的本事來自先前長期的投入｜見識之旅

導讀

Andy Jassy在他的首封年度致股東信中回顧了Amazon在疫情期間的表現和策略。他強調公司在COVID-19危機中的關鍵角色，包括滿足激增的線上購物需求和提供雲端服務支持。

Jassy分析了AWS和消費者業務的不同發展軌跡，前者重新加速增長，後者經歷爆發式增長。這種快速增長帶來了挑戰，如物流壓力和成本上升。面對這些，Amazon展現了適應能力和創新精神。Jassy強調公司通過長期投資和迭代來改善客戶體驗，以配送網絡的發展為例說明公司在物流基礎設施方面的投入。

這封信闡述了Amazon的長期戰略和核心價值觀。Jassy強調公司對客戶體驗的追求和持續創新的決心，展現了Amazon以客戶為中心、勇於創新、靈活應變的形象。通過具體案例和數據，Jassy增強了股東信心，也為行業提供了洞察。

正文

Dear shareholders:

尊敬的股東：

Over the past 25 years at Amazon, I’ve had the opportunity to write many narratives, emails, letters, and keynotes for employees, customers, and partners. But, this is the first time I’ve had the honor of writing our annual shareholder letter as CEO of Amazon. Jeff set the bar high on these letters, and I will try to keep them worth reading.

在過去 25 年的 Amazon 職涯中，我曾為員工、客戶和合作夥伴撰寫了無數的敘事、電子郵件、信函和演講稿。然而，這是我首次以 Amazon 執行長的身分執筆年度股東信，這份殊榮讓我倍感珍惜。Jeff 為這些信件樹立了高標準，我將竭盡全力確保它們依舊值得一讀。

When the pandemic started in early 2020, few people thought it would be as expansive or long-running as it’s been. Whatever role Amazon played in the world up to that point became further magnified as most physical venues shut down for long periods of time and people spent their days at home. This meant that hundreds of millions of people relied on Amazon for PPE, food, clothing, and various other items that helped them navigate this unprecedented time. Businesses and governments also had to shift, practically overnight, from working with colleagues and technology on-premises to working remotely. AWS played a major role in enabling this business continuity. Whether companies saw extraordinary demand spikes, or demand diminish quickly with reduced external consumption, the cloud’s elasticity to scale capacity up and down quickly, as well as AWS’s unusually broad functionality helped millions of companies adjust to these difficult circumstances.

2020年初COVID-19疫情爆發時，幾乎沒有人預料到它會如此廣泛且持久。隨著大多數實體場所長期關閉，人們被迫居家生活，Amazon在全球的角色變得更加重要。數億人開始依賴Amazon提供個人防護裝備、食品、衣物和各種必需品，幫助他們度過這段前所未有的時期。企業和政府也不得不迅速轉變，從辦公室協作轉為遠端工作。在這方面，AWS在維持業務連續性上發揮了關鍵作用。無論公司面臨需求激增還是因外部消費減少而需求驟降，雲端服務靈活擴展容量的能力，以及AWS豐富多樣的功能，都幫助數百萬公司適應了這些艱難局面。

Our AWS and Consumer businesses have had different demand trajectories during the pandemic. In the first year of the pandemic, AWS revenue continued to grow at a rapid clip—30% year over year (“YoY”) in 2020 on a $35 billion annual revenue base in 2019—but slower than the 37% YoY growth in 2019. This was due in part to the uncertainty and slowing demand that so many businesses encountered, but also in part to our helping companies optimize their AWS footprint to save money. Concurrently, companies were stepping back and determining what they wanted to change coming out of the pandemic. Many concluded that they didn’t want to continue managing their technology infrastructure themselves, and made the decision to accelerate their move to the cloud. This shift by so many companies (along with the economy recovering) helped re-accelerate AWS’s revenue growth to 37% YoY in 2021.

在疫情期間，我們的 AWS 和消費者業務呈現不同的需求軌跡。疫情爆發第一年，AWS 收入持續快速增長—在 2019 年 350 億美元年收入的基礎上，2020 年同比增長 30%，但低於 2019 年 37% 的同比增長率。這部分源於許多企業面臨的不確定性和需求放緩，也部分歸因於我們協助公司優化其 AWS 使用以節省成本。同時，企業紛紛重新評估，決定疫情後的轉型方向。許多公司得出結論：他們不願再自行管理技術基礎設施，因此決定加速向雲端遷移。這種普遍的轉變（加上經濟復甦）促使 AWS 在 2021 年的收入增長重新加速至 37%。

Conversely, our Consumer revenue grew dramatically in 2020. In 2020, Amazon’s North America and International Consumer revenue grew 39% YoY on the very large 2019 revenue base of $245 billion; and, this extraordinary growth extended into 2021 with revenue increasing 43% YoY in Q1 2021. These are astounding numbers. We realized the equivalent of three years’ forecasted growth in about 15 months.

相比之下，我們的消費者業務在 2020 年呈現爆發式增長。Amazon 的北美和國際消費者收入在 2019 年已達 2450 億美元的龐大基礎上，2020 年仍同比增長 39%。這一非凡增長勢頭延續至 2021 年，第一季度收入更是同比激增 43%。這些數字令人瞠目結舌。我們在短短 15 個月內，竟實現了相當於三年預期的增長。

As the world opened up again starting in late Q2 2021, and more people ventured out to eat, shop, and travel, consumer spending returned to being spread over many more entities. We weren’t sure what to expect in 2021, but the fact that we continued to grow at double digit rates (with a two-year Consumer compounded annual growth rate of 29%) was encouraging as customers appreciated the role Amazon played for them during the pandemic, and started using Amazon for a larger amount of their household purchases.

隨著世界於 2021 年第二季度末開始重啟，人們逐漸恢復外出用餐、購物和旅行，消費者支出也重新分散到更多實體上。儘管我們對 2021 年的發展存有不確定性，但事實證明我們仍保持雙位數增長（兩年消費者複合年增長率達 29%），這令人振奮。這表明消費者不僅認可了 Amazon 在疫情期間所扮演的角色，更開始將 Amazon 作為更多家庭採購的首選平台。

This growth also created short-term logistics and cost challenges. We spent Amazon’s first 25 years building a very large fulfillment network, and then had to double it in the last 24 months to meet customer demand. As we were bringing this new capacity online, the labor market tightened considerably, making it challenging both to receive all of the inventory our vendors and sellers wanted to send us and to place that inventory as close to customers as we typically do. Combined with ocean, air, and trucking capacity becoming scarcer and more expensive, this created extra transportation and productivity costs. Supply chains were disrupted in ways none of us had seen previously. We hoped that the major impact from COVID-19 would recede as 2021 drew to a close, but then omicron reared its head in December, which had worldwide ramifications, including impacting people’s ability to work. And then in late February, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fuel costs and inflation became bigger issues with which to contend.

這種增長也帶來了短期物流和成本挑戰。我們在 Amazon 的前 25 年裡建立了一個龐大的配送網路，但在過去 24 個月內不得不將其規模翻倍，以滿足激增的買家需求。隨著新產能上線，勞動力市場卻急劇緊縮，使我們難以如常接收所有供應商和賣家的庫存，並將其放置在靠近買家的位置。加上海運、空運和陸運能力日益稀缺且昂貴，這進一步增加了運輸和生產力成本。供應鏈以前所未見的方式中斷。我們原本期望 COVID-19 的主要影響會在 2021 年底消退，但 12 月 Omicron 變種的出現再次衝擊全球，影響了人們的工作能力。2 月下旬，隨著俄羅斯入侵烏克蘭，燃料成本和通貨膨脹更成為我們必須應對的嚴峻挑戰。

So, 2021 was a crazy and unpredictable year, continuing a trend from 2020. But, I’m proud of the incredible commitment and effort from our employees all over the world. I’m not sure any of us would have gotten through the pandemic the same way without the dedication and extraordinary efforts shown by our teams during this period, and I’m eternally grateful.

2021年延續了2020年的趨勢，是一個瘋狂且難以預測的年份。儘管如此，我為我們全球員工展現的非凡承諾和努力深感自豪。在這場大流行期間，若沒有我們團隊的奉獻精神和卓越表現，我懷疑我們任何人都難以度過這段艱難時期。對此，我永懷感激之情。

It’s not normal for a company of any size to be able to respond to something as discontinuous and unpredictable as this pandemic turned out to be. What is it about Amazon that made it possible for us to do so? It’s because we weren’t starting from a standing start. We had been iterating on and remaking our fulfillment capabilities for nearly two decades. In every business we pursue, we’re constantly experimenting and inventing. We’re divinely discontented with customer experiences, whether they’re our own or not. We believe these customer experiences can always be better, and we strive to make customers’ lives better and easier every day. The beauty of this mission is that you never run out of runway; customers always want better, and our job is both to listen to their feedback and to imagine what else is possible and invent on their behalf.

很少有公司能夠應對如此突發且難以預測的事件，如這場大流行病。是什麼讓 Amazon 能夠做到這一點？關鍵在於我們並非從零開始。近二十年來，我們一直在不斷迭代和革新我們的配送能力。在每一項業務中，我們都持續進行實驗和創新。我們對客戶體驗永不滿足，無論是我們自己的還是其他公司的。我們深信這些體驗總有改進空間，因此我們每天都在努力讓客戶的生活變得更美好、更便捷。這個使命的美妙之處在於它永無止境；客戶總是渴望更好的體驗，而我們的工作就是傾聽他們的反饋，想像新的可能性，並為他們創新。

People often assume that the game-changing inventions they admire just pop out of somebody’s head, a light bulb goes off, a team executes to that idea, and presto—you have a new invention that’s a breakaway success for a long time. That’s rarely, if ever, how it happens. One of the lesser known facts about innovative companies like Amazon is that they are relentlessly debating, re-defining, tinkering, iterating, and experimenting to take the seed of a big idea and make it into something that resonates with customers and meaningfully changes their customer experience over a long period of time.

人們常以為改變遊戲規則的創新只是靈光一閃，一個想法突然出現，團隊迅速執行，然後——嘿，一項長期成功的突破性發明就誕生了。事實上，這種情況幾乎從未發生過。關於像 Amazon 這樣的創新公司，鮮為人知的是：他們不斷地辯論、重新定義、調整、迭代和實驗，將一個偉大想法的種子培育成能真正打動顧客的產品，並在漫長的時間裡持續不斷地改善顧客體驗。

Let me give you some Amazon examples.

讓我為您舉幾個 Amazon 的實例。

Our Fulfillment Network: Going back to the pandemic, there’s no way we could have started working on our fulfillment network in March 2020 and satisfied anything close to what our customers needed. We’d been innovating in our fulfillment network for 20 years, constantly trying to shorten the time to get items to customers. In the early 2000s, it took us an average of 18 hours to get an item through our fulfillment centers and on the right truck for shipment. Now, it takes us two. To deliver as reliably and cost-effectively as we desire, and to serve Amazon Prime members expecting shipments in a couple of days, we spent years building out an expansive set of fulfillment centers, a substantial logistics and transportation capability, and reconfigured how we did virtually everything in our facilities. For perspective, in 2004, we had seven fulfillment centers in the U.S. and four in other parts of the world, and we hadn’t yet added delivery stations, which connect our fulfillment and sortation centers to the last-mile delivery vans you see driving around your neighborhood. Fast forward to the end of 2021, we had 253 fulfillment centers, 110 sortation centers, and 467 delivery stations in North America, with an additional 157 fulfillment centers, 58 sortation centers, and 588 delivery stations across the globe. Our delivery network grew to more than 260,000 drivers worldwide, and our Amazon Air cargo fleet has more than 100 aircraft. This has represented a capital investment of over $100 billion and countless iterations and small process improvements by over a million Amazonians in the last decade and a half.

我們的配送網路：回顧疫情期間，我們不可能在 2020 年 3 月才開始構建配送網路並滿足買家需求。20年來，我們一直在不斷創新，努力縮短商品送達買家的時間。2000 年代初期，我們平均需要 18 小時才能將商品通過運營中心並裝上合適的卡車發貨。如今，這個過程只需兩小時。

為了提供可靠且經濟高效的配送服務，並滿足 Amazon Prime 會員幾天內收貨的期望，我們花了數年時間建立了廣泛的運營中心網絡、強大的物流和運輸能力，並重新配置了幾乎所有設施的運作方式。

2004 年，我們在美國有 7 個配送中心，在世界其他地區有 4 個，當時還沒有配送站——這些站點將我們的配送和分揀中心與您在社區看到的最後一英里配送車輛連接起來。到 2021 年底，我們在北美擁有 253 個配送中心、110 個分揀中心和 467 個配送站，在全球還有 157 個配送中心、58 個分揀中心和 588 個配送站。我們的配送網路發展到全球超過 26 萬名司機，Amazon 航空貨運機隊擁有 100 多架飛機。

這代表了超過 1000 億美元的資本投資，以及過去 15 年中超過 100 萬 Amazon 員工無數次的迭代和細微的流程改進。

Ironically, just before COVID started, we’d made the decision to invest billions of incremental dollars over several years to deliver an increasing number of Prime shipments in one day. This initiative was slowed by the challenges of the pandemic, but we’ve since resumed our focus here. Delivering a substantial amount of shipments in one day is hard (especially across the millions of items that we offer) and initially expensive as we build out the infrastructure to scale this efficiently. But, we believe our over 200 million Prime customers, who will tell you very clearly that faster is almost always better, will love this. So, this capability to ship millions of items within a couple days (and increasingly one day) was not from one aha moment and not developed in a year or two. It’s been hard-earned by putting ourselves in the shoes of our customers, knowing what they wanted, organizing Amazonians to work together to invent better solutions, and investing a large amount of financial and people resources over 20 years (often well in advance of when it would payout). This type of iterative innovation is never finished and has periodic peaks in investment years, but leads to better long-term customer experiences, customer loyalty, and returns for our shareholders.

具有諷刺意味的是，就在新冠疫情爆發前，我們決定在未來幾年投資數十億美元，以實現更多 Prime 貨件的一日送達。雖然疫情的挑戰暫緩了這一計劃，但我們現已重新聚焦於此。在一天內配送大量貨物極具挑戰性（尤其是考慮到我們提供的數百萬種商品），且前期成本高昂，因為我們需要建立基礎設施來高效擴展這項服務。然而，我們深信超過 2 億的 Prime 會員會喜歡這一服務——他們清楚地表示，送貨越快越好。

這種能在幾天內（甚至越來越多地在一天內）配送數百萬件物品的能力並非一蹴而就，也非短短一兩年就能開發出來。它是我們通過深入理解客戶需求、組織 Amazon 員工共同創新、在 20 年間投入大量財力和人力資源（往往遠早於收益實現）而艱難取得的成果。這種迭代式創新永無止境，在某些年份會出現投資高峰，但最終將為我們的股東帶來更佳的長期客戶體驗、客戶忠誠度和回報。

AWS: As we were defining AWS and working backwards on the services we thought customers wanted, we kept triggering one of the biggest tensions in product development—where to draw the line on functionality in V1. One early meeting in particular—for our core compute service called Elastic Compute Cloud ("EC2")—was scheduled for an hour, and took three, as we animatedly debated whether we could launch a compute service without an accompanying persistent block storage companion (a form of network attached storage). Everybody agreed that having a persistent block store was important to a complete compute service; however, to have one ready would take an extra year. The question became could we offer customers a useful service where they could get meaningful value before we had all the features we thought they wanted? We decided that the initial launch of EC2 could be feature-poor if we also organized ourselves to listen to customers and iterate quickly. This approach works well if you indeed iterate quickly; but, is disastrous if you can’t. We launched EC2 in 2006 with one instance size, in one data center, in one region of the world, with Linux operating system instances only (no Windows), without monitoring, load balancing, auto-scaling, or yes, persistent storage. EC2 was an initial success, but nowhere near the multi-billion-dollar service it’s become until we added the missing capabilities listed above, and then some.

AWS：在定義 AWS 並逆向思考客戶需求時，我們不斷面臨產品開發中的一大挑戰——如何為首個版本劃定功能界限。一次討論核心計算服務 Elastic Compute Cloud（EC2）的早期會議特別值得一提。原定一小時的會議延長至三小時，我們熱烈討論是否該在缺少配套持久塊存儲（一種網絡附加存儲）的情況下推出計算服務。儘管大家都認同持久塊存儲對完整計算服務至關重要，但開發這項功能需要額外一年時間。問題轉變為：我們能否在完善所有功能之前，就提供一個有價值的服務？

我們決定，只要能夠傾聽客戶意見並快速迭代，EC2 的初始版本可以功能較少。這種策略若能真正快速迭代則效果顯著，但若做不到，後果將會很嚴重。2006 年，我們推出了 EC2，當時它僅有一種實例大小，只在全球一個區域的一個數據中心運行，僅支持 Linux 操作系統（沒有 Windows），也沒有監控、負載均衡、自動擴展或持久性存儲。EC2 初期取得了成功，但直到我們添加了這些缺失的功能及其他特性，它才真正成長為一個價值數十億美元的服務。

In the early days of AWS, people sometimes asked us why compute wouldn’t just be an undifferentiated commodity. But, there’s a lot more to compute than just a server. Customers want various flavors of compute (e.g. server configurations optimized for storage, memory, high-performance compute, graphics rendering, machine learning), multiple form factors (e.g. fixed instance sizes, portable containers, serverless functions), various sizes and optimizations of persistent storage, and a slew of networking capabilities. Then, there’s the CPU chip that runs in your compute. For many years, the industry had used Intel or AMDx86 processors. We have important partnerships with these companies, but realized that if we wanted to push price and performance further (as customers requested), we’d have to develop our own chips, too. Our first generalized chip was Graviton, which we announced in 2018. This helped a subset of customer workloads run more cost-effectively than prior options. But, it wasn’t until 2020, after taking the learnings from Graviton and innovating on a new chip, that we had something remarkable with our Graviton2 chip, which provides up to 40% better price-performance than the comparable latest generation x86 processors. Think about how much of an impact 40% improvement on compute is. Compute is used for every bit of technology. That’s a huge deal for customers. And, while Graviton2 has been a significant success thus far (48 of the top 50 AWS EC2 customers have already adopted it), the AWS Chips team was already learning from what customers said could be better, and announced Graviton3 this past December (offering a 25% improvement on top of Graviton2’s relative gains). The list of what we’ve invented and delivered for customers in EC2 (and AWS in general) is pretty mind-boggling, and this iterative approach to innovation has not only given customers much more functionality in AWS than they can find anywhere else (which is a significant differentiator), but also allowed us to arrive at the much more game-changing offering that AWS is today.

在 AWS 的早期，人們常問我們為何計算不只是一種無差別的商品。事實上，計算遠不止於一台伺服器。客戶需要多樣化的計算類型（如針對存儲、記憶體、高性能計算、圖形渲染、機器學習優化的伺服器配置）、多種形式（如固定實例大小、可移植容器、無伺服器功能）、各種規格的持久性存儲，以及豐富的聯網功能。此外，還有計算核心的CPU晶元。

長期以來，業界主要使用 Intel 或 AMD 的 x86 處理器。我們與這些公司保持重要的合作關係，但也意識到，若要進一步提升性價比（這是客戶的要求），我們必須自主開發晶元。我們的首款通用晶元 Graviton 於 2018 年問世，為部分客戶工作負載提供了更具成本效益的選擇。然而，真正的突破出現在 2020 年。吸取 Graviton 的經驗並在新晶片上創新後，我們推出了 Graviton2，其性價比較同代頂級 x86 處理器提升了 40%。這 40% 的提升對計算影響深遠，因為計算滲透到每一項技術中，對客戶而言意義重大。

Graviton2 取得了顯著成功，前 50 大 AWS EC2 客戶中有 48 個已採用。但 AWS 晶片團隊並未止步，繼續從客戶反饋中學習，並於去年 12 月推出 Graviton3，在 Graviton2 的基礎上再提升 25% 的性能。

我們為 EC2（乃至整個 AWS）客戶開發和交付的產品清單令人驚嘆。這種迭代式創新不僅為客戶提供了遠超其他平台的功能（這是一個重要的差異化因素），還使我們能夠打造出今天這個更具顛覆性的 AWS 平台。

Devices: Our first foray into devices was the Kindle, released in 2007. It was not the most sophisticated industrial design (it was creamy white in color and the corners were uncomfortable for some people to hold), but revolutionary because it offered customers the ability to download any of over 90,000 books (now millions) in 60 seconds—and we got better and faster at building attractive designs. Shortly thereafter, we launched a tablet, and then a phone (with the distinguishing feature of having front-facing cameras and a gyroscope to give customers a dynamic perspective along with varied 3D experiences). The phone was unsuccessful, and though we determined we were probably too late to this party and directed these resources elsewhere, we hired some fantastic long-term builders and learned valuable lessons from this failure that have served us well in devices like Echo and FireTV.

設備：我們首次涉足硬體領域是在 2007 年推出的 Kindle。雖然它的工業設計並非最精緻（乳白色外觀，邊角對某些人來說不太舒適），但它確實具有革命性意義。Kindle 讓客戶能在 60 秒內從超過 90,000 本書（現在已達數百萬本）中下載任何一本——而且我們在打造吸引人的設計方面不斷進步，變得更好更快。

不久之後，我們推出了平板電腦，接著是智慧型手機（其特色是前置攝像頭和陀螺儀，為客戶提供動態視角和多樣的 3D 體驗）。雖然手機項目並不成功，我們意識到可能是進入市場的時機太晚了，因此將資源轉移到其他領域。但這次經歷並非全無收穫：我們招募了一批優秀的長期建設者，並從失敗中汲取了寶貴的經驗教訓，這些都在 Echo 和 FireTV 等後續產品中得到了很好的應用。

When I think of the first Echo device—and what Alexa could do for customers at that point—it was noteworthy, yet so much less capable than what’s possible today. Today, there are hundreds of millions of Alexa-enabled devices out there (in homes, offices, cars, hotel rooms, Amazon Echo devices, and third-party manufacturer devices); you can listen to music—or watch videos now; you can control your lights and home automation; you can create routines like “Start My Day” where Alexa tells you the weather, your estimated commute time based on current traffic, then plays the news; you can easily order retail items on Amazon; you can get general or customized news, updates on sporting events and related stats—and we’re still quite early with respect to what Alexa and Alexa-related devices will do for customers. Our goal is for Alexa to be the world’s most helpful and resourceful personal assistant, who makes people’s lives meaningfully easier and better. We have a lot more inventing and iterating to go, but customers continue to indicate that we’re on the right path. We have several other devices at varying stages of evolution (e.g. Ring and Blink provide the leading digital home security solutions, Astro is a brand new home robot that we just launched in late 2021), but it’s safe to say that every one of our devices, whether you’re talking about Kindle, FireTV, Alexa/Echo, Ring, Blink, or Astro is an invention-in-process with a lot more coming that will keep improving customers’ lives.

回想第一代 Echo 設備及 Alexa 當時的功能，雖然值得注意，但與今日相比卻相形見絀。如今，支援 Alexa 的設備數以億計，遍布家庭、辦公室、汽車、酒店房間，既有 Amazon Echo 設備，也有第三方製造商的產品。您可以聆聽音樂、觀看視頻；控制燈光和家庭自動化；設置「Start My Day」等例程，讓 Alexa 為您報告天氣、根據實時交通狀況估算通勤時間，然後播放新聞；輕鬆在 Amazon 上購物；獲取一般或客製化的新聞、體育賽事更新及相關統計數據。而 Alexa 及相關設備的潛力尚未完全釋放。

我們的願景是將 Alexa 打造成全球最樂於助人、最睿智的個人助理，讓人們的生活更輕鬆、更美好。儘管前路還有許多創新和迭代工作要做，但客戶的反饋持續證明我們正走在正確的道路上。除此之外，我們還有其他處於不同發展階段的設備：Ring 和 Blink 提供領先的數位家庭安全解決方案，而 Astro 是我們於 2021 年底推出的全新家用機器人。可以肯定的是，無論是 Kindle、FireTV、Alexa/Echo、Ring、Blink，還是 Astro，我們的每一款設備都是一項進行中的發明。未來還有更多創新即將問世，持續改善客戶的生活品質。

Prime Video: We started in 2006 with an offering called Amazon Unbox where customers could download about a thousand movies from major studios. This made sense as bandwidth was slower those days (it would take an hour to download a video). But, as bandwidth got much faster to people’s homes and mobile devices, along with the advent of connected TVs, streaming was going to be a much better customer solution, and we focused our efforts on streaming. In 2011, we started offering over 5,000 streaming movies and shows as part of customers’ Amazon Prime subscriptions. Initially, all of our content was produced by other studios and entertainment companies. These deals were expensive, country-specific, and only available to us for a limited period; so, to expand our options, we started creating our own original shows. Our early efforts included short-lived shows like Alpha House and Betas, before we had our first award-winning series in Transparent, and eventually created multi-year franchises in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Boys, Bosch, and Jack Ryan. Along the way, we’ve learned a lot about producing compelling entertainment with memorable moments and using machine learning and other inventive technology to provide a superior-quality streaming experience (with useful, relevant data about actors, TV shows, movies, music, or sports stats a click away in our unique X-Ray feature). You might have seen some of this in action in our recent new hit series, Reacher, and you’ll hopefully see it in our upcoming Lord of the Rings series launch (coming Labor Day 2022). We also expect that you’ll see this iterative invention when we launch Thursday Night Football, the NFL’s first weekly, prime time, streaming-only broadcast, airing exclusively on Prime Video starting in September 2022. Our agreement with the NFL is for 11 years, and we will work relentlessly over the next several years to reinvent the NFL viewing experience for football fans.

Prime Video：我們於2006年推出名為Amazon Unbox的服務，客戶可從主要影業公司下載約1000部電影。考慮到當時頻寬較慢（下載一部影片需要一小時），這是合理的做法。隨著家庭和行動裝置的頻寬大幅提升，加上智慧電視的出現，串流媒體成為更佳的客戶解決方案，我們因此將重心轉移至此領域。

2011年，我們開始在Amazon Prime訂閱中提供超過5,000部串流電影和節目。起初，我們的內容全由其他影業和娛樂公司製作。這些交易不僅昂貴，還因國家/地區而異，且僅在有限時間內提供給我們。為擴大選擇範圍，我們開始製作自己的原創節目。

我們早期嘗試了Alpha House和Betas等短命節目，隨後在Transparent中推出了首個獲獎系列，最終在The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel、The Boys、Bosch和Jack Ryan中建立了多年的特許經營權。這個過程中，我們學到了許多關於製作引人入勝的娛樂節目和難忘時刻的經驗，並運用機器學習等創新技術提供優質的串流體驗（我們獨特的X-Ray功能只需點擊兩下，即可獲得演員、電視節目、電影、音樂或體育統計數據的相關資訊）。

您可能已在我們最近的熱門新劇Reacher中體驗到這些成果，我們也希望您能在即將於2022年勞動節推出的《魔戒》系列中看到更多創新。此外，我們期待您在我們推出週四橄欖球之夜時能感受到這種持續創新。這是NFL首個每週黃金時段的純串流廣播，從2022年9月起在Prime Video上獨家播出。我們與NFL簽訂了11年的協議，並將在未來幾年孜孜不倦地為橄欖球迷重塑NFL的觀賽體驗。

This track record of frequent invention is not only why more sports entities are choosing to work with Prime Video, but also why so many large entertainment companies have become Prime Video Channels partners. Channels is a program that enables entertainment companies to leverage Prime Video’s unique technology and viewing experience, as well as its very large member base to offer monthly subscriptions to their content. Companies like Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, Starz, Corus Entertainment, and Globo have found that they’re driving substantial incremental membership and better customer experience through Channels. While there is so much progress in Prime Video from where we started, we have more invention in front of us in the next 15 years than the last 15—and our team is passionately committed to providing customers with the most expansive collection of compelling content anywhere in the world.

這種持續創新的成績不僅吸引了更多體育實體與 Prime Video 合作，也促使眾多大型娛樂公司成為 Prime Video 頻道的合作夥伴。頻道計劃讓娛樂公司能夠運用 Prime Video 的獨特技術、觀看體驗和龐大會員基礎，提供其內容的月度訂閱服務。Warner Bros. Discovery、Paramount、Starz、Corus Entertainment 和 Globo 等公司發現，透過頻道計劃，他們不僅大幅增加了會員數量，還提升了客戶體驗。儘管 Prime Video 自創立以來已取得長足進步，但我們相信未來 15 年的創新將超越過去 15 年。我們的團隊充滿熱情，致力於為全球觀眾提供最豐富、最引人入勝的內容。

This same sort of iterative invention can be applied to efforts supporting people and communities. Last summer, we added two new Leadership Principles: Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer and Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility. These concepts were always implicit at Amazon, but explicit Leadership Principles help us ask ourselves—and empower more Amazonians at all levels to ask—whether we’re living up to these principles.

這種反覆創新的方法同樣可以應用於支持人們和社區的努力。去年夏天，我們新增了兩項領導力原則：致力成為地球上最佳雇主，以及成功與規模帶來廣泛責任。這些概念一直隱含在亞馬遜的文化中，但明確的領導力原則幫助我們自省——並賦予更多各層級的亞馬遜人權力去問——我們是否真正實踐了這些原則。

For example, more than a million Amazonians work in our fulfillment network. In 2018, we championed the $15 minimum wage (which is more than double the federal minimum wage), but haven’t stopped there. We continued to increase compensation such that our average starting hourly salary is currently over $18. Along with this compensation, we offer very robust benefits, including full health insurance, a 401K plan, up to 20 weeks of parental leave, and full tuition coverage for associates who want to get a college education (whether they remain with us or not). We’re not close to being done in how we improve the lives of our employees. We’ve researched and created a list of what we believe are the top 100 employee experience pain points and are systematically solving them. We’re also passionate about further improving safety in our fulfillment network, with a focus on reducing strains, sprains, falls, and repetitive stress injuries. Our injury rates are sometimes misunderstood. We have operations jobs that fit both the "warehousing” and "courier and delivery” categories. In the last U.S. public numbers, our recordable incident rates were a little higher than the average of our warehousing peers (6.4 vs. 5.5), and a little lower than the average of our courier and delivery peers (7.6 vs. 9.1). This makes us about average relative to peers, but we don’t seek to be average. We want to be best in class. When I first started in my new role, I spent significant time in our fulfillment centers and with our safety team, and hoped there might be a silver bullet that could change the numbers quickly. I didn’t find that. At our scale (we hired over 300,000 people in 2021 alone, many of whom were new to this sort of work and needed training), it takes rigorous analysis, thoughtful problem-solving, and a willingness to invent to get to where you want. We’ve been dissecting every process path to discern how we can further improve. We have a variety of programs in flight (e.g. rotational programs that help employees avoid spending too much time doing the same repetitive motions, wearables that prompt employees when they’re moving in a dangerous way, improved shoes to provide better toe protection, training programs on body mechanics, wellness, and safety practices). But, we still have a ways to go, and we’ll approach it like we do other customer experiences—we’ll keep learning, inventing, and iterating until we have more transformational results. We won’t be satisfied until we do.

舉例來說，超過一百萬名亞馬遜員工在我們的履行網絡中工作。2018年，我們倡導15美元的最低工資（是聯邦最低工資的兩倍多），但我們並未止步於此。我們持續提高薪酬，使得目前我們的平均起薪時薪超過18美元。除了這些薪酬，我們還提供非常全面的福利，包括全面的健康保險、401K計劃、長達20週的育兒假，以及為想要接受大學教育的員工提供全額學費補助（無論他們是否繼續留在公司）。在改善員工生活方面，我們還有很長的路要走。我們已經研究並列出了我們認為的前100個員工體驗痛點，並正在系統地解決這些問題。我們也熱衷於進一步改善履行網絡的安全性，重點是減少拉傷、扭傷、跌倒和重複性壓力傷害。

我們的受傷率有時會被誤解。我們有同時屬於「倉儲」和「快遞和配送」類別的運營工作。根據最新的美國公開數據，我們的可記錄事故率略高於倉儲同行的平均水平（6.4比5.5），但略低於快遞和配送同行的平均水平（7.6比9.1）。這使我們相對於同行處於平均水平，但我們並不滿足於平均。我們希望成為同類中最好的。當我剛開始擔任新角色時，我花了大量時間在我們的履行中心和安全團隊，希望能找到一個能迅速改變這些數字的靈丹妙藥。但我並沒有找到。以我們的規模（僅2021年我們就僱用了超過30萬人，其中許多人是首次從事這類工作，需要培訓），要達到你想要的目標，需要嚴謹的分析、深思熟慮的問題解決能力，以及願意創新的精神。

我們一直在剖析每個流程路徑，以確定如何進一步改進。我們有多種正在進行的計劃（例如，幫助員工避免長時間做同樣重複動作的輪換計劃、當員工以危險方式移動時提醒他們的穿戴設備、提供更好腳趾保護的改良鞋子、關於身體力學、健康和安全實踐的培訓計劃）。但是，我們還有很長的路要走，我們會像對待其他客戶體驗一樣處理這個問題——我們會不斷學習、創新和迭代，直到我們取得更具變革性的結果。在達到這個目標之前，我們不會滿足。

Similarly, at our scale, we have a significant carbon footprint. It's a big part of why we created The Climate Pledge a few years ago (a pledge to be net-zero carbon by 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement). We're making significant progress on this effort (we're committed to powering our operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025—five years ahead of our original target of 2030, we have ordered over 100,000 electric vans to deliver packages, and have over 300 companies who've joined us in The Climate Pledge). But, we have a different challenge than most companies given the diversity and intensity of our operations (including shipping billions of packages per year). We're committed to the challenge, but it will take relentless invention.

同樣地，以我們的規模而言，我們的碳足跡相當顯著。這是我們幾年前創立「氣候承諾」（The Climate Pledge）的主要原因之一（承諾在2040年實現淨零碳排放，比巴黎協定提前十年）。我們在這方面正在取得重大進展（我們承諾到2025年使用100%可再生能源來支持我們的運營—比我們最初2030年的目標提前五年，我們已訂購了超過10萬輛電動貨車來配送包裹，並有超過300家公司加入了我們的氣候承諾）。但是，考慮到我們運營的多樣性和強度（包括每年運送數十億個包裹），我們面臨著與大多數公司不同的挑戰。我們致力於迎接這個挑戰，但這需要不懈的創新。

We also are trying to increase the amount of affordable housing in the communities in which we have a large presence. Our more than $2 billion Housing Equity Fund that we started a year ago has already allocated $1.2 billion toward affordable housing initiatives in the areas around Washington state's Puget Sound region, Arlington (Virginia), and Nashville (Tennessee).

我們也在努力增加我們有大規模業務的社區中的可負擔住房數量。我們一年前啟動的超過20億美元的住房公平基金已經分配了12億美元用於華盛頓州普吉特海灣地區、弗吉尼亞州阿靈頓和田納西州納什維爾周邊地區的可負擔住房計劃。

A final quick example is Kuiper, our low Earth orbit satellite network that we're spending over $10 billion to build in the next several years. Kuiper will serve customers with minimal to no fixed broadband connectivity, changing access to information and resources for many communities (analysts estimate approximately 300-400 million customers globally are in this category). We're optimistic that there is a pretty good business model for us too, but we'll see—and it's a real game changer for underserved families and businesses that will unfold over many years as we keep evolving its capabilities.

最後一個簡短的例子是Kuiper，我們的低地球軌道衛星網絡，我們計劃在未來幾年內投資超過100億美元來建設。Kuiper將為幾乎沒有或完全沒有固定寬頻連接的客戶提供服務，改變許多社區獲取信息和資源的方式（分析師估計全球約有3-4億客戶屬於這一類別）。我們樂觀地認為這對我們來說也是一個相當不錯的商業模式，但我們拭目以待——隨著我們不斷發展其功能，這將成為服務不足的家庭和企業的真正遊戲規則改變者，其影響將在未來多年內逐漸展現。

If this approach sounds appealing, a natural question is what's required to get good at it? It's easier said than done, but here are some components that have helped us:

如果這種方法聽起來很吸引人，一個自然的問題是：要擅長這種方法需要什麼？說起來容易做起來難，但以下是一些幫助我們的要素：

1/ Hire the Right Builders: We disproportionately index in hiring builders. We think of builders as people who like to invent, who look at customer experiences, dissect what doesn't work well about them, and seek to reinvent them. We want people who keep asking why can't it be done? We want people who like to experiment and tinker, and who realize launch is the starting line, not the finish line.

1/ 聘請合適的建設者：我們在招聘建設者方面投入了不成比例的精力。我們認為建設者是那些喜歡發明的人，他們關注客戶體驗，剖析其中不好的部分，並尋求重新發明。我們想要那些不斷問"為什麼不能做到？"的人。我們想要那些喜歡實驗和修補的人，他們意識到發布只是起點，而不是終點。

2/ Organize Builders into Teams That Are as Separable and Autonomous as Possible: It's hard for teams to be deep in what customers care about in multiple areas. It's also hard to spend enough time on the new initiatives when there's resource contention with the more mature businesses; the surer bets usually win out. Single-threaded teams will know their customers' needs better, spend all their waking work hours inventing for them, and develop context and tempo to keep iterating quickly.

2/ 將建設者組織成盡可能獨立和自主的團隊：團隊很難在多個領域深入了解客戶所關心的事情。當與更成熟的業務存在資源競爭時，也很難在新計劃上投入足夠的時間；更有把握的投資通常會勝出。單一任務的團隊會更了解客戶的需求，將所有工作時間都用於為他們發明創造，並建立上下文和節奏以保持快速迭代。

3/ Give Teams the Right Tools and Permission to Move Fast: Speed is not pre-ordained. It's a leadership choice. It has trade-offs, but you can't wake up one day and start moving fast. It requires having the right tools to experiment and build fast (a major part of why we started AWS), allowing teams to make two-way door decisions themselves, and setting an expectation that speed matters. And, it does. Speed is disproportionally important to every business at every stage of its evolution. Those that move slower than their competitive peers fall away over time.

3/ 給予團隊正確的工具和權限以快速行動：速度不是預定的。這是一個領導力的選擇。它有權衡取捨，但你不能某天醒來就開始快速行動。這需要擁有正確的工具來快速實驗和構建（這是我們啟動AWS的主要原因之一），允許團隊自己做出雙向門決策，並設定速度很重要的期望。事實確實如此。速度對於每個企業在其發展的每個階段都具有不成比例的重要性。那些比競爭對手行動緩慢的企業，隨著時間的推移會逐漸落後。

4/ You Need Blind Faith, But No False Hope: This is a lyric from one of my favorite Foo Fighters songs ("Congregation"). When you invent, you come up with new ideas that people will reject because they haven't been done before (that's where the blind faith comes in), but it's also important to step back and make sure you have a viable plan that'll resonate with customers (avoid false hope). We're lucky that we have builders who challenge each other, feedback loops that give us access to customer feedback, and a product development process of working backwards from the customer where having to write a Press Release (to flesh out the customer benefits) and a Frequently Asked Questions document (to detail how we'd build it) helps us have blind faith without false hope (at least usually).

4/ 你需要盲目的信念，但不要有虛假的希望：這是我最喜歡的Foo Fighters樂隊歌曲之一（"Congregation"）的歌詞。當你發明時，你會想出人們會拒絕的新想法，因為這些想法以前從未被實現過（這就是盲目信念的來源），但退一步確保你有一個能夠引起客戶共鳴的可行計劃也很重要（避免虛假希望）。我們很幸運有能相互挑戰的建設者，有能獲得客戶反饋的回饋循環，以及一個從客戶角度反向工作的產品開發流程，其中需要撰寫新聞稿（詳細說明客戶利益）和常見問題文檔（詳細說明我們如何構建它），這有助於我們保持盲目信念而不產生虛假希望（至少通常如此）。

5/ Define a Minimum Loveable Product (MLP), and Be Willing to Iterate Fast: Figuring out where to draw the line for launch is one of the most difficult decisions teams must make. Often, teams wait too long, and insist on too many bells and whistles, before launching. And, they miss the first mover advantage or opportunity to build mindshare in fast-moving market segments before well-executing peers get too far ahead. The launch product must be good enough that you believe it'll be loved from the get-go (why we call it a "Minimum Loveable Product" vs. a "Minimum Viable Product"), but in newer market segments, teams are often better off getting this MLP to customers and iterating quickly thereafter.

5/ 定義最小可愛產品（MLP），並願意快速迭代：確定發布的界限是團隊必須做出的最困難決定之一。通常，團隊在發布前等待太久，堅持要有太多花哨的功能。結果，他們錯過了先行者優勢或在快速發展的市場細分中建立心佔率的機會，而執行良好的競爭對手已經遙遙領先。發布的產品必須足夠好，讓你相信它從一開始就會被喜愛（這就是為什麼我們稱之為"最小可愛產品"而不是"最小可行產品"），但在較新的市場細分中，團隊通常最好將這個MLP交給客戶，然後快速迭代。

6/ Adopt a Long-term Orientation: We're sometimes criticized at Amazon for not shutting much down. It's true that we have a longer tolerance for our investments than most companies. But, we know that transformational invention takes multiple years, and if you're making big bets that you believe could substantially change customer experience (and your company), you have to be in it for the long-haul or you'll give up too quickly.

6/ 採取長期導向：我們在Amazon有時會因為不太關閉項目而受到批評。確實，相比大多數公司，我們對投資的容忍度更長。但是，我們知道變革性的發明需要多年時間，如果你正在進行你認為可能大大改變客戶體驗（和你的公司）的大賭注，你必須長期投入，否則你會太快放棄。

7/ Brace Yourself for Failure: If you invent a lot, you will fail more often than you wish. Nobody likes this part, but it comes with the territory. When it's clear that we've launched something that won't work, we make sure we've learned from what didn't go well, and secure great landing places for team members who delivered well—or your best people will hesitate to work on new initiatives.Albert Einstein is sometimes credited with describing compound interest as the eighth wonder of the world ("He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn't, pays it"). We think of iterative innovation in much the same way. Iterative innovation creates magic for customers. Constantly inventing and improving products for customers has a compounding effect on the customer experience, and in turn on a business's prospects.

7/ 為失敗做好準備：如果你進行大量發明，你會比你希望的更頻繁地失敗。沒有人喜歡這一部分，但這是不可避免的。當我們清楚地知道我們推出的某個東西不會成功時，我們確保我們從失敗中學習，並為表現出色的團隊成員安排好去處——否則你最優秀的人才會猶豫是否要參與新計劃。愛因斯坦有時被認為將複利描述為世界第八大奇蹟（"理解它的人賺取它。不理解它的人支付它。"）。我們以同樣的方式看待迭代創新。迭代創新為客戶創造魔力。不斷為客戶發明和改進產品對客戶體驗有複合效應，進而影響企業的前景。

Time is your friend when you are compounding gains. Amazon is a big company with some large businesses, but it's still early days for us. We will continue to be insurgent—inventing in businesses that we're in, in new businesses that we've yet to launch, and in new ideas that we haven't even imagined yet. It remains Day 1.

當你在累積收益時，時間是你的朋友。Amazon是一家擁有一些大型業務的大公司，但對我們來說仍然是早期階段。我們將繼續保持顛覆性——在我們現有的業務中發明創新，在我們尚未推出的新業務中發明創新，以及在我們甚至還沒有想像到的新想法中發明創新。仍然是第一天。

Sincerely,
Andy Jassy
President and Chief Executive Officer
Amazon.com, Inc.

誠摯地，
Andy Jassy
總裁兼CEO
Amazon.com, Inc.

以上就是2021年Amazon致股東信。

想看隔年的Amazon致股東信，請至《2022年Amazon致股東信：在變革中前行，分享成果與思考》。

想看全系列導讀目錄，請至《Amazon 1997–2023年致股東信導讀目錄》。