S9-Ep51: Amazon’s Innovation Secret from their VP: Look to Failure for Your Success | Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future

Guest: Beryl Tomay

One of the biggest keys to success is failure.

It seems counterintuitive, but the reality is we ALL make mistakes. Highly successful leaders embrace stumbles and fumbles, and learn from them.

As Beryl Tomay points out, that’s especially true at Amazon. Their innovation culture is so highly effective because Amazon learns from each step, good or bad, and builds from it. Indeed, some of Amazon’s most successful products wouldn’t have seen the light of day if not for what was learned from products that didn’t make the cut!

Beryl started as an intern and rose through the ranks to be Amazon’s Vice-President of Last Mile Delivery and Technology. Here’s what she and Maureen cover in this episode:

1. The tools in Amazon’s innovation culture that breed success – including mentors, resiliency, and perpetual learning;

2. The drive to (and importance of) planting seeds for the future; and

3. How a love for Radiohead facilitated Beryl’s career path that led to Amazon!

Other episodes you'll enjoy:

- Delivering the Future: Amazon’s Innovation Culture with David Carbon, John Love, Dr. Vin Gupta, & Tye Brady

- Mastering Skills that Empower Innovation with Jeff DeGraff

- Humans in the Loop: AI’s New Business Models with Suchi Srinivasan

For daily wisdom from our guests, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn. We’re on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Twitter, too!

RESOURCES:

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI. Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

Women and Leadership: Journey Toward Equity by Sherylle J. Tan & Lisa DeFrank-Cole
Becoming Superman: My Journey from Poverty to Hollywood by J. Michael Straczynski
Own the AI Revolution by Neil Sahota
Time and Chance by Kim Campbell

NOTE: As an Amazon partner, we may make a small commission from books you buy through these links.

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OUR PODCAST TEAM:

Host & Executive Producer: Maureen Metcalf

Editor & Producer: Dan Mushalko

Video & Graphics Editor: Devon Mushalko

Assistant Editor & Raconteur: Luigi Morelli

Supporting Us After Every Stumble: Jenna Reik & Mike Morrow-Fox

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Website: InnovativeLeadershipInstitute.com

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About Our Guest:

Beryl Tomay has been at Amazon for nearly 19 years having joined in 2005 as a Software Development Engineer. She was part of the small team that launched the original Kindle device and remained in the Devices organization for the subsequent 8 years. She joined the nascent Last Mile organization (the logistics business that gets packages through the final steps on their way to customers’ doorsteps) in early 2014 as one of its first employees, and today is responsible for all of Amazon’s Last Mile delivery businesses, including the Delivery Service Partner, Amazon Flex and Hub Delivery programs. In addition, she oversees the Last Mile product and technology teams covering areas such as mapping, routing, capacity planning, pickup points, delivery station and driver experience technologies. Prior to Amazon, Beryl received her undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Canada.