Thinking Long-Term

I was reading the november issue of Wired on the plane this week (the beauty of digital copies on tablets is that you can catch up on past issues!) and something struck me while reading the article on Amazon and Jeff Bezos entitled Jeff Bezos Owns The Web In More Ways Than You Think. I wanted to share that short quote (and strongly recommend reading the interview; it's a clear illustration that the Apple model is not the only option...) because it's relevant to infrastructure discussions:

Our first shareholder letter, in 1997, was entitled, “It’s all about the long term.” If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that. Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue.