Today’s interview is with Marcelo Calbucci, an entrepreneur, innovator, technologist, and author. Marcelo joins me today to talk about his new book: The PRFAQ Framework: Adapting Amazon’s Innovation Framework to Work for You, why Amazon uses it, the five principles of the PRFAQ, where and how it can be applied and what to expect when you are creating your first one.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Lush’s Journey: Balancing Innovation, Empathy, and Customer Care – Interview with Naomi Rankin of Lush – and is number 542 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Here are the highlights of my chat with Marcelo:

• While working at Amazon, I learned a lot of very interesting methods and frameworks that they use to run their business.
• I decided to write a book about one of these methods and frameworks that Amazon uses called the PRFAQ.
• When I joined Amazon, right in the first week, I was exposed to a PRFAQ as a vision and strategy framework. And the first one was very weird. The second one was also weird. And the way Amazon runs the meetings is very awkward as well because you sit in silence and you read the document first before you start any discussion. But after like the third or fourth time, I realized the power of this document.
• So when left to Amazon, I felt the urge to write about this technique, this framework, so that more founders and product leaders and innovators everywhere could benefit from it.
• PRFAQ is Press Release Frequently Asked Questions.
• Marcelo made a conscious decision not to use any of the generative AI engines like ChatGPT or Gemini or Copilot, to help write or edit the book.
• The reason is that the book is about writing. So if you read the book, you’ll learn how to use writing to think.
• The press release in the PRFAQ is not a marketing tool. It’s just an internal way to get clarity on vision.
• The PRFAQ, the entire document is six pages long. The first page is your press release, then on the second page you have the customer FAQs. And the customer FAQs are just like the press release, they are fictional. They are written as if the product or business or new service already exists.
• Then you have four pages of internal FAQs, where you discuss the viability, the feasibility, the usability and the value of the product, both for the business and for the customer, and you are answering questions around that, such as what is the problem we are solving for the customer? What is the impact for our business? How are customers solving this problem today? How do we
• plan to go to market or how are customers going to find our product or service or business? This will help you answer the question about why you should pursue this opportunity.
• At the end, the PRFAQ is a decision tool to help you decide this a good opportunity or not and whether you should pursue it, or not.
• The PRFAQ is a great way to identify what you don’t know.
• There are five principles behind a successful PRFAQ:
  • Customer-centric: It starts from the customer, and it captures their needs, pain points, or desires. It captures how customers are being (under)served today, who they are, and what matters to them.
  • Aspirational: It’s an aspirational vision that is feasible, viable, usable, and valuable.
  • Clear, concise, and coherent: It presents the project in its best possible light. It’s easy to understand by the people involved in the project, and it’s logical.
  • Truth-seeking: It is a mechanism to learn and discover. It’s not a way to manipulate opinions or force ideas onto people. It evolves at each round of review, improving its accuracy.
  • A strategic decision-making tool: It’s a tool to decide if the team should pursue a project, why, and when.
• Amazon uses this for everything, literally every decision at Amazon was backed by a PRFAQ.
• Every program at the company, internal and external programs, use a PRFAQ to help with decision-making.
• Even the global travel team would write PRFAQs for their own decision-making, policies, services, any kind of innovation etc.
• They would even use PRFAQ to decide if we should replace a vendor or not.
• But the superpower of the PRFAQ is really when you’re trying to decide if you should do a new business, a new product, or implement new features or change your product in any way.
• In many ways, it’s a business case in another form, but it’s not…
• It almost feels like a business case, which is coherent because it’s telling a story from different perspectives.
• It forces you to communicate and collaborate with different parts of the business.
• Over the long term, the PRFQ is a small investment. It’s an investment of a couple of weeks so that you can move faster and with more precision later.
• However, here’s what you need to bear in mind. Your first PRFAQ is not going to be good, and the first project that you use it on, the PRFAQ is not going to be good.
• It’s like riding a bike for the first time. It’s not what you expect it to be. So, you need to give it a try, maybe two or three times, before you get the hang of it, understand how to really use it within the culture of your organisation, and be very effective.
• Writing is a skill; it’s a craft that you get better at. But you’re probably better than you think you are.
• Marcelo’s best advice: Learn about people. Learn behavioural science and behavioural economics to help you understand what motivates people, what drives people, and how to have interpersonal relationships with your customers, your employees, your peers, and everyone else.
• Marcelo’s Punk CX brand: Costco.

About Marcelo

Marcelo Calbucci is an entrepreneur, innovator, technologist, and author. He’s been building software products for over thirty years, having sold his first software at age fourteen. He has worked at Microsoft (Exchange Server & Bing) and Amazon (People eXperience & Technology), leading software engineering, product, data science, and UX. He has founded six startups in Seattle and London and launched a dozen tech projects. He’s the inventor of eleven patents. Marcelo has been a community builder in Seattle, organizing dozens of meetups, events, and conferences. He has written over one thousand blog posts and articles on his web-site and other tech publications. Outside of tech and startups, Marcelo loves to cook elaborate meals for friends, run marathons (eight and counting), and travel with his wife and kids.

Find out more about Marcelo at his website, check out the book, say Hi to him on X (Twitter) @calbucci and feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn here.

Credit: Photo by Romain Dancre on Unsplash