The Amazon way: mixing ones and zeros with nuts and bolts

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Recorded15 Dec 2023

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Show notesAmazon and DoorDash take different approaches to bridging the physical and digital worlds. Amazon has built an extensive infrastructure of warehouses, logistics networks and data centres to directly control its operations. DoorDash instead relies on partnerships with restaurants and stores for deliveries, limiting its capital investment. In this podcast, Baillie Gifford investment manager Kirsty Gibson analyses the advantages of each model and how both approaches can pose a disruptive challenge to more traditional businesses. Amazon and DoorDash exemplify two distinct approaches to rooting a business in both the physical and digital worlds. Amazon has done so by investing deeply in physical infrastructure, including its vast logistics operations and data centres. DoorDash, by contrast, has focused on partnering with others to offer meal and grocery deliveries. Baillie Gifford investment manager Kirsty Gibson explores the merits of each approach and discusses how the two companies and others like them can pose a disruptive challenge. BackgroundKirsty Gibson is an investment manager in Baillie Gifford’s US Equity Growth Team and is joint manager of the American Fund and US Growth Trust. In this episode of Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking, she explores how a growing number of companies are posing a challenge to incumbents by innovating in both the digital and physical realms. The podcast draws on an interview she gave as part of Baillie Gifford’s Disruption Week 2023 event. In addition to discussing how Amazon and DoorDash put this into practice, Gibson also discusses the chemicals maker Solugen, self-driving lorries pioneer Aurora and electric car maker Rivian, among others. Resources:Where software meets steelDisruption Week 2023 articles and videosGrowth waves: supporting companies and spotting opportunitiesPast podcasts Timecodes:00:00 Introduction1:30 Historical background4:21 Capital-intensive and capital-light approaches5:31 How Amazon blends its physical and digital operations8:33 Rivian’s electric pickup trucks9:57 Solugen: making chemicals with software13:39 DoorDash’s capital-light approach15:45 DashMart distribution centres17:28 Aurora’s autonomous trucking business model20:30 Reinvesting in Meta23:25 Investing with conviction24:18 Ginkgo Bioworks’ potential Follow us via: TwitterLinkedIn Companies mentioned include:AlphabetAmazonAurora InnovationDoorDashGinkgo BioworksMetaNetflixRivianSolugenTeslaTwilio

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