“I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big.” – Babe Ruth
Swing for the Fences
Baseball and business share more than competition—they both reward bold swings. In Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos draws a vivid comparison between them and shows how to swing for the fences in business.
In baseball, if you swing for the fences, you will likely strike out often. However, if you connect with the ball, you’ll also hit a lot of home runs. That’s what can also happen in business.
Here’s where the analogy breaks down: outcomes are capped. No matter how hard you swing, the most runs you can score are four.
Business isn’t capped like baseball. You can strike out—but if you connect, you can score far more than four.
Baseball limits you to four runs. Business doesn’t. Sometimes, when you connect, you can score a thousand.
This concept of scoring a ton of runs is what Jeff Bezos calls the long-tail distribution of returns in Amazon Unbound. He stresses in the book that it’s the reason to be bold—to swing for the fences.
That kind of outcome requires a culture of experimentation. Tinker. Test. Let ideas bubble up—and when one looks promising, swing hard.
Culture of Experimentation
Amazon Unbound covers how Jeff Bezos incorporated an entrepreneurial mindset at Amazon. It’s what he called a culture of experimentation. Before his team could swing for the fences, he wanted people to think about what’s possible.
Many companies talk about experimentation. What set Amazon apart was how Bezos removed the fear of failure.
Teams could take risks without fear of punishment or audit. Bezos built psychological safety into Amazon’s system—failure wasn’t just tolerated, it was expected.
The only way to incorporate a culture of experimentation is to make sure everyone knows they can fail. It’s ok to fail. You’re going to strike out a lot when you swing for the fences.
Fearless experimentation led to discovery. Once teams found something that worked, they doubled down—swinging for the fences.
Lower Cost Structure
A culture of experimentation eventually leads to the ability to swing for the fences. That much is captured in Amazon Unbound. But the only way to maximize value when you swing for the fences is by lowering your costs.
Amazon’s value to customers came from relentless cost discipline—cut costs, then pass those savings back to customers.
Jeff Bezos notes in Amazon Unbound that Amazon doesn’t charge more because it can’t figure out how to make its products cost less. No, Amazon invents on behalf of its customers to make products cost less.
Inventing on behalf of the customer is something Bezos baked into the DNA of Amazon. That tradition is now carried on by Andy Jassy.
Experimentation breeds big swings—but Amazon maximized those swings by pairing them with low-cost discipline.
Long-Term Thinking
Jeff Bezos introduced a culture of experimentation, cost discipline, and a mentality to swing for the fences. Long-term thinking became another hallmark of his leadership.
Amazon Unbound spotlights Dave Clark as a case study in long-term thinking—he freed Amazon’s supply chain, embodied Bezos’ belief in patient, compounding bets.
Big thinkers exist everywhere, but few pair ambition with patience. At Amazon, that pairing defined leadership.
Bezos rewarded leaders who had a long-term thinking mindset. He thought in decades, not quarters. Prime delivery, grocery integration, and Amazon Web Services—none of these are quarterly strategies. All took decades to pay off through long-term thinking.
When you have a long-term mindset, it allows you to swing for the fences. Case in point: when COVID-19 hit, e-commerce had a boom. Amazon was well-positioned to take advantage of the boom because of its long-term thinking.
Clark’s long-term bet on Amazon Logistics created leverage—and Bezos turned that leverage into a customer benefit.
Here’s how it went down: Amazon offered two-day shipping via Amazon Prime—a long-term thinking bet.
Then, Clark and Bezos poured jet fuel on Amazon Prime by converting two-day shipping to one-day shipping.
It was an expense to move from two-day to one-day Amazon Prime shipping—albeit a manageable expense. The long-term thinking bet was doable because Clark figured out how to connect the fulfillment centers and transportation network to enable one-day Amazon Prime shipping.
Another long-term thinking mindset highlighted in Amazon Unbound had to do with Amazon Fresh grocery delivery, an additional subscription fee service.
Amazon retired the monthly subscription fee for grocery delivery, adding Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods delivery to the perks of Amazon Prime membership.
Retiring the subscription fee and adding the perk to the Amazon Prime membership proved fortuitous. Millions of Amazon Prime customers, homebound during the pandemic, turned to Amazon for grocery delivery.
Day Two Companies
Bezos knew that combining experimentation, low costs, and long-term vision would keep Amazon from becoming what he called a “Day Two” company.
Day Two, companies fall into stasis, then irrelevance, decline, and finally death. Bezos’ antitode: stay parnoid, keep experimenting, and never stop swinging.
Irrelevance for a Day Two company is followed by an excruciating decline. The company is in negative territory. The decline of a Day Two company ends in death. It’s over. The ship has sailed. There’s no hope. The company has been ousted.
Bezos stressed that avoiding stasis, irrelevance, decline, and death is how Amazon would survive. It would continue to be a Day One company.
The takeaway: The formula is timeless: build a culture of experimentation, lower costs, think long-term, and keep swinging for the fences. That’s how Amazon stays Day One.
