Amazon’s Strange Rule: Write the Press Release First

Start at the end

At Amazon, a product idea can begin with a document written as if the product already exists. The press-release portion describes the customer problem, the promised benefit and why the product should matter. A companion FAQ forces the team to confront the awkward questions: who will use it, what will disappoint them, how should it be priced, and why is it better than the alternatives.

The point is not publicity. It is constraint. A vague idea can survive a slide deck. It has a harder time surviving a page that must explain, in ordinary language, why a customer should care.

The mechanism, not the mythology

Amazon describes Working Backwards as a systematic way to vet ideas and create products. Former executives Colin Bryar and Bill Carr have written that the process was developed inside the company and refined through repeated reviews with senior leadership.

It is tempting to credit the method with every Amazon success. The record is more nuanced. Amazon has used PR/FAQ broadly across products and services, and AWS has documented individual products such as the Cloud Development Kit that grew from an internal need through a Working Backwards process. But the existence of a PR/FAQ is not proof that the process alone created AWS, Prime, Kindle or Alexa.

A presentation can hide ambiguity. A one-page promise to a customer has much less room to hide.

Why it travels

The process has escaped Amazon because it solves a common organizational problem: teams can become attached to a technology before proving that anyone needs it. Working Backwards reverses that order.

The deeper lesson is less glamorous than an innovation slogan. Good product development often begins by making the idea explain itself before the organization spends heavily to make it real.