To support that charter, the whole notion of IT at Amazon.com is purposefully vague. "There's no clear separation between the business and IT," Vogels says.

Instead, IT is organized into small, loosely coupled groups. These are dubbed "two-pizza teams," given that they are generally no larger than what you could feed with two pizzas, Vogels explains.

Each team is completely autonomous in developing an idea and is responsible for everything from scoping the problem to actually operating the service that implements the idea.

This brings the team into close contact with the customer that is using its service and allows for a very fast feedback loop to improve on the innovation.

Key to making this a successful model, Vogels says, is to hire technologists who thrive on working in small teams with equally talented people.