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Who really said it

I very frequently get the question: What's going to change in the next 10 years? I almost never get the question: What's not going to change in the next 10 years?

Spoken by Jeff Bezos b. 12 January 1964 · Founder of Amazon; CEO 1994–2021
Verified In copyright

Bezos said these lines on stage at the AWS re:Invent Day 2 fireside chat with Werner Vogels, in a recording uploaded by Amazon Web Services on 29 November 2012 — Quote Investigator transcribes both questions from that video ↗. He had already made the same point in print in “The Institutional Yes,” his October 2007 Harvard Business Review interview ↗, where he asked it about “the next five to ten years.”

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“I very frequently get the question: What's going to change in the next 10 years? I almost never get the question: What's not going to change in the next 10 years?” Jeff Bezos, in conversation with Werner Vogels, AWS re:Invent fireside chat, video published 29 November 2012. Earlier print version: "The Institutional Yes," Harvard Business Review, October 2007.

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Still under copyright (rights held by Amazon.com, Inc. / Amazon Web Services (the 2012 re:Invent recording); Harvard Business Publishing (the October 2007 HBR interview)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Source
2012 re:Invent Day 2: Fireside Chat with Jeff Bezos & Werner Vogels
Published
Video uploaded by Amazon Web Services, 29 November 2012
Earlier in print
“The Institutional Yes,” Harvard Business Review, October 2007
Form
Spoken remarks, on video — transcribed by Quote Investigator

I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s gonna change in the next 10 years?’ And that is an interesting question. It’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. Transcribed from video

This is Quote Investigator’s transcription ↗, printed unbroken — QI puts no ellipsis between the two questions, and the two sentences that separate them (“And that is an interesting question. It’s a very common one.”) are what the popular one-breath version drops. The spoken “gonna” is usually written out as “going to” when the line is quoted.

Video recording
Watch the 2012 re:Invent fireside chat
Quote Investigator: What's Not Going To Change in the Next 10 Years?

How the line travelled

In copyright

Both documented sources are modern and firmly in copyright: the re:Invent conversation was recorded and published in 2012 by Amazon Web Services, and the October 2007 interview belongs to Harvard Business Review. Quoting the two sentences for commentary or attribution is ordinary fair use, but neither the recording nor the interview is public domain.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What people get wrong about it

The attribution itself is sound — this really is Bezos, and there is video. What circulates wrongly is the packaging: the wording is tidier than the transcript, the numbers differ from the print original, and the idea has an older ancestor Bezos is not usually asked about.

The smooth one-breath version compressed

Quote Investigator's transcription ↗ puts two sentences between the questions — “And that is an interesting question. It’s a very common one.” — so the popular one-breath text runs together lines that were separated by intervening speech. QI also renders the first as “What's gonna change” — the spoken contraction that circulating versions tidy up.

“The next 10 years” variant

In the October 2007 Harvard Business Review interview QI quotes ↗, Bezos asks about “the next five to ten years” in both halves. The matched ten-year framing is the later spoken form, not the print original.

Wolfgang R. Schmitt precursor

QI documents the chairman and CEO of Rubbermaid using the same inversion in a Summer 1998 Marketing Management roundtable: “Everybody's looking forward, thinking about what's going to change, and I thought I'd talk about what's not going to change with regard to new product innovation” ↗. This is a precursor to the thought, not the source of Bezos's sentences.

Quote Investigator's verdict is unambiguous: “Jeff Bezos deserves credit for the quotation which appeared in the 2007 HBR interview. Bezos has revisited this theme several times over the years” ↗ — and the familiar ten-year wording is one of those revisits, spoken at re:Invent in 2012.

Context

Why the second question was the point

Bezos was not being cute. He used the inversion as a strategy argument: predictions about change are unreliable, so a business should be built on the handful of customer desires that will still be true in a decade. In the October 2007 Harvard Business Review interview where the idea first appears in print, he put the conclusion plainly — “It helps to base your strategy on things that won’t change” ↗.

He kept returning to it. Quote Investigator documents the framing in a Daily Telegraph interview on 24 December 2007, again at Amazon’s shareholders meeting on 7 June 2011, and then in the 2012 re:Invent form that became the version everyone quotes.

It helps to base your strategy on things that won’t change.

How the wording drifted between 2007 and 2012

The 2007 print original asks about “the next five to ten years” in both halves. The Telegraph version from December 2007 uses a flatter phrasing: “I often get the question ‘In the next 10 years, what is going to change?’ But I rarely get the question ‘What is not going to change?’”

The crisp parallel construction — “very frequently” against “almost never,” ten years against ten years — belongs to the spoken 2012 re:Invent delivery. That is the version that spread.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Change Wisdom Time

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: What's Not Going To Change in the Next 10 Years?quoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: transcribes the 2012 re:Invent wording, traces Bezos back to a 2007 HBR interview, notes a 1998 precursor by Rubbermaid's Wolfgang R. Schmitt, and credits Bezos.
2012 re:Invent Day 2: Fireside Chat with Jeff Bezos & Werner Vogelsyoutube.com

The primary artifact — the recorded conversation Quote Investigator cites as the source of this exact wording.
The Institutional Yes (HBR interview with Jeff Bezos)hbr.org

The October 2007 Harvard Business Review interview, conducted by Julia Kirby and Thomas A. Stewart, in which the idea first appears in print.
Jeff Bezosen.wikipedia.org

Biography and dates: born 12 January 1964 in Albuquerque, founded Amazon in mid-1994, CEO until 5 July 2021, then executive chairman.
Jeff Bezos (Wikiquote)en.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's sourced Bezos quotations. Worth noting that this particular line is not among them — Quote Investigator, not Wikiquote, is the anchor here.

The man who actually said it

Who was Jeff Bezos?

Jeff Bezos

b. 1964 · Founder of Amazon; CEO 1994–2021

Jeffrey Preston Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico on 12 January 1964 and founded Amazon in mid-1994, running it as chief executive until 5 July 2021, when he became executive chairman. He also founded the spaceflight company Blue Origin in September 2000 and announced his $250m purchase of The Washington Post on 5 August 2013 (the sale closed that October). The “what won’t change” framing is one of his most durable rhetorical habits — he returned to it in print, at shareholder meetings and on stage over more than a decade.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

AWS re:Invent fireside chat, 29 November 2012

Jeff Bezos, remarks in conversation with Werner Vogels, “2012 re:Invent Day 2: Fireside Chat with Jeff Bezos & Werner Vogels,” video uploaded by Amazon Web Services, 29 November 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4MtQGRIIuA; transcribed in Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: What’s Not Going To Change in the Next 10 Years?,” 3 March 2021. Earlier print version: Jeff Bezos, “The Institutional Yes,” interview by Julia Kirby and Thomas A. Stewart, Harvard Business Review, October 2007.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I very frequently get the question: What's going to change in the next 10 years? I almost never get the question: What's not going to change in the next 10 years?’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-very-frequently-get-the-question-whats-going-to-change-in/

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