Home

The Halloran Lab invited Bill Carr, a distinguished alumnus of Colby College’s Class of 1989, to campus last week to share insights from his more than fifteen years inside Amazon, where he helped launch and manage the company’s global digital music and video enterprises, including Amazon Music, Prime Video, and Amazon Studios. Drawing from his book, Working Backwards: Insights, Stories and Secrets from Inside Amazon, Carr detailed the company’s distinctive product development process, a strategy that flips the traditional innovation model on its head. Carr explained that the process, which Amazon calls “Working Backwards,” was formalized after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos grew dissatisfied with product teams that were merely creating incremental upgrades or replicating existing solutions. Bezos mandated a shift in focus, requiring teams to stop starting with a technology and instead begin with the desired customer experience.

The core of the “Working Backwards” method lies in the creation of two preliminary documents: the Press Release (PR) and the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Carr noted that traditionally, a press release is the final document written by a company, drafted after a product has been fully engineered and manufactured. Amazon requires it to be written first. The mandate to write the press release first forces the entire team to focus on a single, essential question: why will customers care enough to buy this product? The PR must define the customer value proposition and the key features of the product in clear, external-facing language. By starting with the outcome that truly matters to the customer, the process prevents teams from developing products based on what the company is currently good at or what technology is currently available.

The second critical document, the FAQ, addresses the technical, business, and legal hurdles identified in the process of defining the ideal customer outcome. Carr emphasized that the goal of the initial PR should include a degree of “suspension of reality,” proposing features or price points that the team does not yet know how to deliver. It is the job of the FAQ to then document the hard questions and outline the path for working backward to solve the problems necessary to meet the promise of the PR.

Carr illustrated this principle with the development of the Amazon Kindle. At the time of its conception, Amazon was solely an e-commerce company with no experience in manufacturing hardware or creating applications. According to Carr, the concept of becoming a device manufacturer was initially met with disbelief across the company.

Despite this, the Kindle’s initial PR outlined non-negotiable requirements for the customer experience. The device had to feature a selection of over 120,000 titles, which accounted for approximately 90% of Amazon’s total book sales, and book prices had to be set at a low point. Furthermore, the device required a non-LCD e-ink screen and wireless connectivity, a feature that did not yet exist on the market when the project began. The FAQ section was then filled with the challenges, such as how to negotiate a new deal with publishers and how to create the necessary wireless infrastructure. This customer-first approach, which was also used to develop Amazon Web Services (AWS), ultimately forced the company to become something it was not initially.

The event concluded with a question and answer session, during which Carr engaged with students about the practical application of the method. Nathaniel Scardino`28 asked about the inherent tension in the process. Carr had presented a product development method that demands daring goals in the Press Release while requiring thorough planning in the FAQ, and the student inquired about how product teams managed the balance between bold ambition and realistic feasibility. Carr explained that the creative tension is the point of the method. He stressed that value creation happens precisely when a team successfully solves one or more seemingly impossible problems laid out in the FAQ, transforming a hypothetical customer benefit into a market reality.

Another question addressed the company’s foresight, asking if those inside Amazon had an idea of just how massive products like AWS or the Kindle would eventually become. Carr stated that even the founders of Amazon underestimated the company’s trajectory. He recounted that Jeff Bezos’ original business plan projected the company would reach $100 million in sales over ten years, a milestone they achieved in just three months. Carr concluded that innovators should focus on creating genuine customer value rather than attempting to accurately predict future scale.

~ Stephen Owusu Badu `27

On October 21st, recipient of this year’s F. Russell Cole Distinguished Lectureship in Environmental Studies Dr. Robert D. Bullard presented his keynote address “Environmental and Climate Justice from Footnote to Headline” to a packed Ostrove Auditorium. Pairing a wry sense of humor with an abundance of hard data, Bullard provided an overview of the history of environmental racism in the United States and how he and others in the environmental justice field have worked to create progress. 

The F. Russell Cole Distinguished Lectureship in Environmental Studies was created to commemorate the retirement of Oak Professor of Biological Sciences Emeritus F. Russell Cole, who was a director of the Environmental Studies program at the College and played a significant role in bringing the College to the forefront of environmental education. Each year, the Environmental Studies Program appoints at least one Cole Distinguished Lecturer who has made important contributions to environmental science, policy, humanities, or sustainability in general. 

Bullard, often labeled the “father of environmental justice”, is currently a Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University. He is the author of 18 books addressing various environmental justice issues, and his long and laudable career has included spending time on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. Bullard has received numerous accolades, including the United Nations Environment Program Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement Award.

The lecture was opened with a land acknowledgement, expressing respect for the Wabanaki tribes whose ancestral lands the College is situated on, performed by Professor of Environmental Studies Gail Carlson. She moved on to describe the important role that F. Russell Cole played in the formation of the environmental Studies department at the College and her own career as she was encouraged by him to follow her passion for public health and the environment, which inevitably led her to environmental justice.

Introducing Bullard was Sarah Doore `27. Doore is native to Maine and is a junior at the College pursuing a major in environmental policy and a minor in religious studies. She had the honor of having a meal with Bullard before the event, and describes him as an incredibly down-to-earth and sincere person with an open demeanor despite the monumental nature of his accomplishments.

Welcomed to the stage with enthusiastic applause, Bullard began his lecture by sharing a word of advice from his grandmother before jumping into his career, which he “tried to pattern… after one of [his] heroes, W. E. B. Du Bois, who was an educator, a scholar, a writer, an activist, and someone who cared about human rights, civil rights, and justice.” These descriptors fit Bullard well, as he upholds the values of human rights, civil rights, and justice in all of the work he has put into promoting environmental justice education, expanding both scholarly and accessible writings on the subject, and participating in environmental justice activism.

Interweaving personal anecdotes with extensive quantitative evidence, Bullard’s lecture covered the basic history of the environmental justice movement in the United States by following the path of his career through various struggles, defeats, and victories. The sweeping pervasiveness of structural environmental racism in the United States was hammered home, yet despite the dark nature of the subject at hand, there were various moments throughout the lecture in which Bullard’s sly sense of humor drew out surprised laughter from much of the audience.

Though the future of the environmental justice movement in the United States is uncertain, Bullard left the audience with a call to action. In response to a question from the audience asking what students can do to support the movement, Bullard urged, “[W]hat you can do is more. Whatever you’re doing, do more of it… there’s a need to do more in every aspect of this work.”

Pia Artzer `29, a student interested in environmental studies, left the lecture feeling inspired. She was highly impacted by the way Bullard used data, saying “Instead of lecturing about the statistics, he used them to encourage people to do action and he used them in a context that was interesting and made sense.” 

The environmental justice movement is facing a unique moment in United States history, and as Bullard says, “[H]aving the science, having the data, having the research, having the facts is not enough. We must marry that with action. That’s our movement.” Bullard is an inspiration to any student at the College hoping to work in the field of environmental justice, and his words on Tuesday were well-received by a grateful audience.

~ Anna Izquierdo `29

Mirco Dinelli, a distinguished member of Colby College’s Class of 2018, recently returned to campus to present his doctoral research on the crucial intersection of fiscal policy and environmental sustainability. Dinelli, who successfully completed a double major in Economics and Physics at Colby, is now an Assistant Professor of Economics at St. John Fisher University, having recently earned his Ph.D. from Yale University. His research focuses on Macroeconomics and Environmental Economics. The talk, titled “The Political Economy of Climate Bonds,” was centered on whether government debt, often labeled “climate bonds,” can be responsibly deployed to fund climate abatement measures.

The presentation took place before an audience largely consisting of the Economics Department faculty, who constituted approximately 80 percent of the audience. Rob Lester, associate professor of economics, introduced Dinelli, welcoming the alumnus back to the department and highlighting the relevance of his work to contemporary policy debates.

Dinelli began by framing the problem of climate change mitigation as a fundamental intergenerational conflict. He argued that taking meaningful action to reduce emissions requires present-day governments to impose costs on current voters through taxes or spending cuts. However, he said the resulting benefits, such as a stable climate, are primarily accrued to future generations who are not yet participating in the political process.

According to Dinelli, one commonly proposed solution, advocated by economists such as Jeffrey Sachs, involves issuing government debt, or climate bonds. The appeal of this strategy is that it allows the costs of necessary abatement to be deferred, meaning that future generations, who enjoy the environmental benefits, are also responsible for servicing the debt. Dinelli also said that this could result in an improvement for both current and future welfare.

Dinelli’s research rigorously tested this theory within a politico-economic model. His framework, which uses an overlapping generations probabilistic voting structure, incorporated the dynamics of sequential elections and the self-interested motivations of voters. He identified two primary constraints that complicate the theory in practice. The first is obvious: the future generations cannot vote. The second is that government debt is fungible; that is, a government may issue bonds intended for climate mitigation but then politically redirect the funds to projects that yield immediate benefit for current voters, such as tax cuts or popular public services.

The results of the unconstrained model painted a clear, unfavorable picture. In a standard political equilibrium where debt proceeds are not restricted, the system naturally leads to an outcome detrimental to environmental goals. The model consistently demonstrated an equilibrium featuring excessive debt and insufficient abatement. Standard, non-earmarked debt was found to be counterproductive in the long run because the debt crowded out both the accumulation of physical capital and future environmental spending, ultimately increasing pollution and decreasing overall economic output. According to Dinelli, this conclusion suggested that banning or severely limiting standard debt, perhaps through a constitutional rule, would actually improve future welfare and reduce emissions.

Dinelli remarked that the negative findings regarding unconstrained debt prompted a deeper investigation into solutions that could introduce a commitment mechanism into the policy. He explored the use of earmarked climate bonds, which legally constrain the government to allocate a specific portion of the bond proceeds toward abatement projects.

The discussion moved into a crucial examination of the welfare implications of these constrained policies. Rob Lester, associate professor of economics, later raised a question asking Dinelli to quantify the severity of the political equilibrium’s outcomes. He asked what the theoretical ideal for welfare would look like in a planner solution, suggesting that this benchmark was necessary to accurately measure how poorly the actual political outcome performed.

Dinelli responded by confirming that his full analysis included a social planner solution where he calibrated the model and solved for the best earmark policy. His core finding was that earmarked bonds can indeed become an effective tool for reducing emissions. Through quantitative evaluation, the model was calibrated to align the costs and benefits of abatement with established climate models, while also matching key macroeconomic data from developed economies. The analysis showed that the beneficial effect of earmarking on emissions followed a non-monotonic pattern, indicating that the commitment should be neither too lax nor excessively strict. The optimal result, Dinelli found, occurred when approximately 60 percent of the debt proceeds were required to be spent on abatement.

This optimal policy yielded a 20% reduction in emissions compared to the unconstrained political scenario. Furthermore, it produced a welfare gain in the steady state equivalent to a 38% increase in consumption, a substantially greater benefit than the twenty-eight percent gain achieved by simply banning debt altogether.

As the presentation concluded, Tim Hubbard, professor of economics, offered a question, inquiring whether an alternative policy of reducing current government consumption to fund a future compensatory account would achieve similar welfare benefits. Dinelli acknowledged that such a strategy, which emphasizes internal budget management rather than external debt, could indeed yield positive welfare results. He noted, however, that while the alternative approach was certainly feasible, it did not fit the specific research objective of his paper, which was to model the direct interaction of time, debt, and abatement within the climate bonds framework. Dinelli then ended his talk on the note that “once we put all this together, we can see that climate bonds can turn debt from a hindrance into a catalyst for climate policy, but it requires a strong degree of comment.” As we navigate the future of the climate, Dinelli’s words can provide insight into further policy decisions relating to the environment.

~ Stephen Owusu Badu `27