Flywheel

Flywheel is a metaphor from Jim Collins that Bezos applied to Amazon. Logic: low prices → more buyers → more sellers → wider choice → even more buyers → even more data → even lower prices. Each revolution is harder until the flywheel spins, and easier when it is already in motion.

The difference between flywheel and growth loop is in the accent. Growth loop describes the mechanics at the level of one user (“came → received value → referred another”). Flywheel is a strategic map of the relationships between business model elements at the company level. Amazon Flywheel is not about an individual user, it is about how the entire mechanism of sellers, buyers, logistics and prices reinforces itself.

For small businesses, flywheel thinking is useful as a strategic exercise: draw your elements and the arrows between them. If the arrows do not close in a cycle, you do not have a flywheel, you have a list of activities. Most marketing strategies I see are just that: a list of activities without understanding how they reinforce each other.