Behemoth, Amazon Rising: Power and Seduction in the Age of Amazon

Amazon is the most extraordinary business story of our time. In 25 years, it’s become a $280 billion multi-sector giant, and within 5 years, Amazon may be the biggest company in America. Behemoth, Amazon Rising explains how Amazon built five interlocking rings logistics, Amazon Prime, the Amazon Marketplace, everyday low pricing, and constant innovation. The rings work together to create a moat too deep to scale around Amazon's retail empire.

But Amazon is not just any company. It’s brilliant, agile, cold, efficient, amoral, incredibly innovative, secretive, scary, seductive. It’s entirely customer-obsessed — which is great for customers, but not necessarily for producers. And there is no end to Amazon's ambitions, as it marches into logistics, cloud services, publishing, groceries and much more.

That relentless growth will test us profoundly. Behemoth describes those challenges and shows how to handle them — if we are smart, committed, and prepared to match Amazon's long-term perspective with an equally bold vision of our own.

Gaster’s dissection of Amazon’s rise and domination is full of surprises and strategic insights. Anyone in business needs to understand how Amazon pivoted from survival tactics to competitive advantage to monopolistic power within two decades.
- Seth Goldman, co-founder of Honest Tea and Chair of Beyond Meat

BEHEMOTH, AMAZON RISING provides incredible insights into the secrets of Amazon’s success, the threat it poses to every industry it touches, and the risks to Amazon itself.
- Vivek Wadwha, Distinguished Fellow, Harvard Law School, Labor and Worklife

Behemoth is a must-read. Each chapter fills your bucket with meaningful takeaways and insights to help you and your team think in new and inventive ways about business, the customer, and society. Gaster simplifies the essence of innovation and execution, giving the reader the wonderful feeling of excitement to invent and build the next big idea.
- Neil Ackerman, Head of Advanced Technologies, Middle East and Africa, Johnson and Johnson

Fucking brilliant! Nailed it.
- Mike Shatzkin Founder & CEO of The Idea Logical Company

Behemoth is the story of the e-commerce giant’s growth and dominance. It is an intriguing take on what’s driven Amazon to becoming one of the most successful and talked-about companies ever!
- Dean Maciuba, Managing Partner, Last Mile Experts North America

This riveting book explains clears how the new corporate giants emerged, the damage they can wreak through their damage, but also a clear road map about how they can be harnessed to serve the needs of society, rather than vice versa. Behemoth It is a must-read on the most compelling challenges confronting society and how to deal with them.
- David Audretch, Distinguished professor, School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University

No doubt we are entering the age of Amazon. It’s Amazon's 21st century version of manifest Destiny, and Gaster digs deep to show how we are all willingly along for the ride.
- Amy Millman, President, Springboard Enterprises

A must read analysis that outlines how Amazon’s innovations, such as Prime, have led to its dominance and why that will likely not only continue but expand as e-commerce accelerates. It is a thoughtful, carefully researched analysis of an amazing and sometimes threatening American behemoth.
- Charles Wessner, Georgetown University

Amazon is central to the 21st century economy. Robin Gaster’s fascinating and comprehensive examination substantially advances our understanding.
- John Zysman, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley

Dr. Robin Gaster is president of Incumetrics Inc. (a data and program evaluation consultancy), a visiting scholar at George Washington University, and a nationally recognized expert on innovation and small business. Following a PhD from UC Berkeley and a BA from Oxford University, Gaster taught at the University of Virginia, and worked in the IMF board room. He was awarded a Congressional Fellowship. He has since developed a consulting business serving clients seeking to understand the intersection of technology, innovation, economics, and politics. Clients include thinktanks like Brookings and the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy; foreign governments (Sweden, Finland); big companies like Houghton Mifflin and Deloitte; firms with interests in specific sectors like education, publishing, and energy; and a host of smaller bespoke projects as well. His work has been published in Foreign Policy and the Atlantic, he edited a book on international telecommunications, and he has testified before Congress. In 2004, he joined a major project at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine where he was lead researcher and principal writer on a multi-volume series of reports that became the gold standard for assessing US government innovation programs for small businesses. Dr. Gaster also started a local online information service in partnership with the Electric Power Research Institute, was CEO of a small software company that made business software, and partnered with Deloitte and Touche to build a cutting edge information service covering the internet and telecoms in the mid-1990s.