Amazon’s Growth in the Context of the Opportunities and Challenges of Industry 4.0

Amazon has grown tremendously over the last decade, becoming one of the most successful and powerful companies in technology and beyond. Its success can be attributed primarily to its management board, which made wise investments in technologies, allowing Amazon to create one of the most integrated supply chains in the commerce industry and beyond. However, maintaining its growth is extremely difficult, especially in such a volatile and competitive market. According to this, industry 4.0 has a high potential as a technology that could help Amazon strengthen its supply chain and maintain its position as the leader in many industries, primarily e-commerce and cloud services. Among the initiatives that Amazon must undertake is to strengthen all of its information systems against cyber-attacks and to maintain its position as one of the leading companies investing in new technologies such as the cloud via its subsidiary AWS, especially since all projects launched or expected to be launched by Amazon will benefit directly or indirectly from the cloud, particularly Prime Video, Amazon's video-streaming service that will serve as the underlying technology for all of its services. Furthermore, increasing the gap between the company and all other companies in cutting-edge technologies such as robots and autonomous vehicles would allow the company to create a blue ocean far away from the traditional competition. Finally, some industry 4.0 technologies could help the company enhance its distinct and excellent customer service paradigm. Despite all the changes that Amazon need to adopt to implement the technologies of industry 4.0, some strategic decisions need to be taken in term of the organisational capability by the fact that the decision must be taken by the whole committee and not just one person to avoid repeating the failure of pets.com. Additionally, the company must change its missions, which are primarily focused on one sector, e-commerce, although it is now very successful in many sectors.