2022

Watanabe, Chihiro; Akhtar, Waleed; Tou, Yuji; Neittaanmäki, Pekka

This paper elucidates the inside of the black box of Amazon's unique research and development (R&D) dynamism that made it the world's top R&D leader by transforming “routine or periodic alterations” into “significant improvement” during the R&D process. This dynamism also succeeded in transforming the COVID-19 pandemic period into a springboard for new innovation, leading to Amazon's notable growth notwithstanding the pandemic. An empirical analysis using a techno-economic approach focusing on Amazon's endeavor to develop a series of advanced digital fashions (ADFs) and online-based luxury brands (neo-luxury) before and during the COVID-19 pandemic was conducted. Amazon became a global apparel leader based on learning orchestration externality through developing a series of ADFs that emerged co-evolution with neo-luxury corresponding to the cultural shift to a new age of meaning. The focal driver of design-driven innovation is meaning, and meaning-seeking innovation emerges as a self-propagating generative function. Amazon has been advancing Amazon Web Services (AWS) as an innovative, advanced composite cloud infrastructure. This infrastructure incorporates a generative function and develops a cloud-based fashion platform by integrating all stakeholders in one place. Given the common key function, the self-propagating generative function, AWS, and neo-luxury resonate and induce co-evolution between them. This co-evolution emerges as growing seamless switching. Thus, a new perspective of innovation toward a non-contact society can be explored. This paper aims to reveal a theoretical and empirical demonstration of this dynamism, which gives rise to insights for pioneering a new frontier beyond current business models toward a non-contact society after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.