Comment by vishnugupta

A different example, from Amazon. The top down directive from Jeff was to build every new initiative in total secrecy completely cut off from rest of the organization. To an extent even the building would be cordoned off for other employees. Kindle reader, Eco line of devices, AWS and so on.

I guess the reason was to let them move fast and deliver 0-1 product without being shackled by existing strictures, including the leaders with vested interests. They would hire whole division worth of people within weeks. The downside was a whole bunch of duplicate systems, as everyone would build their own payment processor, order management, UI etc. The results are starting to show as AWS is struggling to piece everything together as coherent higher order offerings. Like there are some two dozen ways to control access, a dozen ways to deliver notifications and so on.