Outsized returns come from betting against conventional wisdom, but conventional wisdom is usually right

--- Jeff Bezos, in testimony to the House Judiciary committee, Antitrust sub-committee on July 29, 2020, on the topic Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 6: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, from his witness statement (pdf)

Excerpt

In addition to good luck and great people, we have been able to succeed as a company only because we have continued to take big risks.  To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.  Outsized returns come from betting against conventional wisdom, but conventional wisdom is usually right.