Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is accustomed to praise, but he also takes criticism rather well for one of the world’s richest men. The e-commerce giant recently reported a $544-million operating loss for the third quarter of 2014 and Bezos is also under fire over the failure of Amazon’s Fire Phone to make an impact.

But when Bezos was asked tough questions about the state of his company, he pulled no punches. “If you look at our stock price over a year, five years, ten years, it all looks pretty great,” he said. “ He was also dismissive over the dismal third quarter earnings, terming them a blip on the radar.

Embracing failure

“What matters is companies that don’t continue to experiment or embrace failure eventually get in the position where the only thing they can do is make a 'Hail Mary' bet at the end of their corporate existence,” he said. He also added that managing a company explicitly to meet quarterly targets would be a mistake. He likened the company’s story to having very profitable lines of business, but then using some of those skills to diversify into alternate ventures, bets which often took longer than a few months to succeed or fail. "A few big successes compensate for dozens and dozens of things that didn't work," he said, pointing to Amazon's gains from its Kindle tablet, data centre business and third party online marketplace.

The company plans to continue with its strategy of bold bets. For example, just last week, the company made a foray into the household goods arena with the launch of its baby diapers. Bezos steered clear from calling the Fire smartphone a success, but asked everyone to ‘stay tuned’.

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