When Jeff Bezos announced his plans to step aside as CEO of Amazon
, it didn’t just bring an end to his two-and-a-half decade run as the head of the $1.6 trillion retail behemoth he started from scratch. It also capped one of the world’s most innovative and influential legacies in the areas of business and technology.
Bezos founded Amazon as an online bookstore in 1994, launching the company out of the garage of his rented home in the Seattle suburbs. In the decades since, Amazon has become one of the most powerful, revered and scrutinized companies in the world, with its influence growing far beyond e-commerce to touch almost every major industry, from cloud computing and health care to grocery, banking and advertising.
The Amazon founder’s determination to shake up industry after industry, while focusing relentlessly on the company’s core customers, has earned Bezos a spot among America’s foremost entrepreneurs, such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
