Bezos encourages employees to search broadly despite criticism that Amazon is not focused enough. “Every new business we’ve ever engaged in has initially been seen as a distraction by people externally, and sometimes even internally,” says Bezos. “They’ll say, ‘Why are you expanding into media products? Why are you going international? Why are you entering the marketplace business with third-party sellers?’ We’re getting it now with our new infrastructure web services. ‘Why take on these new developer customers?’ ”Bezos adds that most companies’ big errors have been acts of omission and not acts of commission: “It’s the opposite of sticking to your knitting. It’s when you shouldn’t have stuck to your knitting and you did,” he says. “It’s very fun to have a culture where people are willing to take these leaps. It’s the opposite of the ‘institutional no.’ It’s the institutional yes. People at Amazon say, ‘We’re going to figure out how to do this.’”