Honestly spoken, I had been very much surprised by this statement by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos‘ as Amazon is known as such a strong data-driven and data-empowered business.
The pharmaceutical industry has a strong tradition following anecdotal feedback and inspiration, e.g. by scientific key opinion leaders, and we currently have to painfully learn to complement this by quantitative data streams. Vice versa, Amazon had to learn how to complement the data-driven approach (their tradition) with the power of anecdotal feedback.
Both types of insights are complementing each other. The anecdotal (qualitative) and the data (quantitative). With the anecdotal pointing where to focus in the data stream; and the data stream having the power to prove the anecdotal.
In case you might be interested learning more about the Amazon approach on anecdotal …