What Amazon’s Fortune 500 rise teaches about experimenting beyond the core business

Amazon appears poised to take the top spot on the Fortune 500, edging out Walmart for the first time in more than a decade. It’s a symbolic changing of the guard in corporate America, writes my colleague Phil Wahba in this must-read feature.

For years, the rivalry between Amazon and Walmart looked like a fight over retail: e-commerce versus stores, software versus logistics, disruption versus incumbency. But Amazon’s rise to the top of the Fortune 500 points to a deeper leadership lesson, one that goes well beyond who sells the most goods.

Amazon did not overtake Walmart by simply becoming a better retailer. It won by refusing to rely on retail economics alone. While competitors focused on squeezing more efficiency from their core business, Amazon gradually built additional engines with entirely different financial dynamics. Amazon Web Services, originally created to power internal operations, became a high-margin cloud giant that now generates a disproportionate share of the company’s operating profit. That profitability gave Amazon........

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