Why is Amazon in danger of being an also-ran in the great drone logistics race?
An interesting article in Ars Technica, “How Walmart and Alphabet jumped ahead of Amazon in drone delivery”, explores a theme I have been discussing in my classes for some time: the importance of either being first or announcing an initiative before the competition, versus the ability to execute a strategy coherently.
Jeff Bezos fired the shot that started the drone logistics race on December 1, 2013 at 7:15 pm when, in the middle of an interview on CBS News’ 60 Minutes, he mentioned that his company was working on drone deliveries. Before then, virtually no one had talked about using them in this way.
From there, things have moved quickly, though not without difficulties. Nevertheless, the problems that have arisen have nothing to do with the doomsayers predictions: very few thefts of drones or goods and noise levels are decreasing as the technology improves. As always, the skeptics who only saw drawbacks in innovation have been wrongfooted: companies have been applying for approval of their services, regulators have been granting them, and we are now in a situation where the drone logistics race is now in full flight, with companies now shipping goods routinely in several countries.
