I know it's fashionable to hate on MBAs, but I am not entirely convinced engineers are any better equipped with skills such as: requirements gathering, scoping, presenting, project management, competitive research, financial modeling, memo writing, and strategic planning. I don't believe these are truly vacuous activities, and - loathe as I am to say - MBAs may be the best trained to do this.

(Disclosure: I do not have an MBA)

IBM's hyped initiatives are almost a sell signal. Blockchain, Watson,.... whatever IBM gets into and sinks huge resources into invariably fails. How can a company with so many smart people and technical managers lead to so much failure. Failure not of the "portfolio of small bets most of which go nowhere" but rather a few major hyped initiatives that almost all fail.

I'm curious, what was the reason for starting with books?

It is utterly surprising that even Bezos couldn't resist choosing a business MBA guy as his successor just like Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Bill Gates did! They talked ALL their lives about importance of "product person", innovators, disruptors, technologists and derided "business" CEOs. But when it came down to it, they ALL chose the safest possible suit at their disposal to run their ships. Steady as it goes...