Vice president of Amazon Echo, Mike George, explained: "We have a thing called 'working backwards.' The first thing we do is we write a press release, ignoring every technical thing we can’t do for now. It’s our aspirations. We also write FAQs where we identify every question we would receive as if we issued the press release. We answer the question in aspirational ways too, ignoring, for the moment, the technical hurdles. In some cases we actually build things."
The idea is to dream about what this product could be. The next step is to hash out the idea between a team of experts that would potentially work on the new product. "There's a team in there, in a room, debating, from vice presidents to junior software developers," he says.
Everyone is not only encouraged to speak their mind, they are obligated to, he says. That's because Amazon has a motto: "Have backbone." It means that Amazon wants all the people working on a new product to be on board with the idea.