Why Amazon is the king of innovation: Advantage, Alexa

When they write the business school case studies about innovation in the future, one story they're sure to spotlight is the Amazon Echo, better known these days as Alexa. Amazon's Echo Dot, Tap, Alexa equate to Amazon Everywhere strategy The company's Alexa platform--along with integration with third parties and replenishment systems like Dash--highlight an ambitious smart home and Internet of things effort. The Echo gave birth to what has become the Alexa ecosystem (which has spawned three devices at the time of this writing) and to a ton of supporting services that interface with everything from home control to smartphones. But when Alexa was first introduced, the tech pundocracy collectively scratched its head in bafflement. Was this another Amazon strategic blunder, like the Fire phone had been just a few months earlier? Why would anyone want to talk to a Pringles-can sized speaker, especially when our phones already had Siri and Google voice recognition?