The Tao Of Alibaba

From a long-time Alibaba executive and former special assistant to Jack Ma, this is the first book to articulate how Alibaba's unique culture and “tai chi” management principles are providing a business and economic development model for the rest of the world. If you took the economic might of Amazon, and added the penetration of Facebook, the ubiquity of Google, and the cultural significance of YouTube, you might have something starting to resemble Alibaba. Commonly mischaracterized as a kind of Chinese eBay for businesses, Alibaba and its interlinked network of products and services have exploded into global markets, disrupting conventional businesses and creating previously unimaginable opportunities for millions of small businesses worldwide. This book reveals the Tao of Alibaba—the company’s “secret sauce”—a consciously cultivated ethos and spirit that has enabled Alibaba to weather tough times and setbacks, and persist toward a common mission. It is a blueprint of the company’s management philosophy, crystalized into the most important elements that have driven its success, and it provides a road map for how to incorporate these principles into any organization’s operations. Wong distills his nearly two decades of experience inside the company to show readers how to align their organization’s capabilities with performance-maximizing tools in order to achieve success. But most importantly, the Tao of Alibaba teaches the pursuit of greater purpose and meaning, steering entrepreneurs to view their ventures as a vehicle for having profound and lasting impacts on their communities. Ultimately, the lessons shared in The Tao of Alibaba will serve as timeless tools for any entrepreneur seeking to configure their organization toward purpose and impact.

From a long-time Alibaba executive and former special assistant to Jack Ma, this is the first book to articulate how Alibaba's unique culture and “tai chi” management principles are providing a business and economic development model for the rest of the world. If you took the economic might of Amazon, and added the penetration of Facebook, the ubiquity of Google, and the cultural significance of YouTube, you might have something starting to resemble Alibaba. Commonly mischaracterized as a kind of Chinese eBay for businesses, Alibaba and its interlinked network of products and services have exploded into global markets, disrupting conventional businesses and creating previously unimaginable opportunities for millions of small businesses worldwide. This book reveals the Tao of Alibaba—the company’s “secret sauce”—a consciously cultivated ethos and spirit that has enabled Alibaba to weather tough times and setbacks, and persist toward a common mission. It is a blueprint of the company’s management philosophy, crystalized into the most important elements that have driven its success, and it provides a road map for how to incorporate these principles into any organization’s operations. Wong distills his nearly two decades of experience inside the company to show readers how to align their organization’s capabilities with performance-maximizing tools in order to achieve success. But most importantly, the Tao of Alibaba teaches the pursuit of greater purpose and meaning, steering entrepreneurs to view their ventures as a vehicle for having profound and lasting impacts on their communities. Ultimately, the lessons shared in The Tao of Alibaba will serve as timeless tools for any entrepreneur seeking to configure their organization toward purpose and impact.

Under the guidance of its charismatic CEO Jack Ma, Alibaba has swiftly grown from a partnership of eighteen friends operating out of a cramped apartment in the Chinese city of Hangzhou into a multibillion dollar Internet colossus with 25,000 employees, hundreds of millions of registered users, and a market capitalization of more than $260 billion—larger than that of Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and PayPal combined. This is a company that, until recently, few outside China had even heard of. A couple of years ago, a Google search for 'Alibaba' would have been more likely to produce references to Forty Thieves and One Thousand and One Nights than to China and on-line commerce. That changed in a big way on September 19, 2014 when, on Alibaba’s first day of trading, the value of its shares offered on the New York Stock Exchange shot up 38 percent to $25 billion, setting a new record for biggest initial public offering of all time. In the months since, Alibaba, has become one of the market’s best-known companies and has repeatedly closed among the world’s ten most valuable companies as measured daily by market capitalization. At the time of writing, Alibaba is more valuable than such recognized institutions as General Motors, General Electric, IBM, and Oracle, and a Google search for 'Alibaba' now yields seven pages of references to the Chinese company before turning up any mention of the Persian folktale. Alibaba is destined to join the pantheon of truly iconic Internet startups that now includes Google, Amazon, and Facebook, and Alibaba’s name will soon be as well known to global consumers as it already is to investors. The story of Alibaba’s rise is one of the great business narratives of our time. And it’s a story that, until now, no author has fully told...

Hundreds of candid quotes from Chinese tech giant Jack Ma that reveal his thoughts on business values, innovation, competition, teamwork, philanthropy, and more. Ever since the Alibaba Group went public on September 19, 2014—with an initial public offering of a record-breaking $25 billion—Jack Ma, the founder and charismatic “spiritual leader” of the e-commerce behemoth, has been making headlines around the world. Alibaba is now the largest retailer in the world, and since 2015, the company’s online sales and profits have outstripped those of Amazon, eBay, and Walmart combined. Recently, Alibaba’s cloud computing arm has been outperforming major players such as Google and Amazon, and Jack Ma has been widening its investments into new sectors, such as entertainment and electric cars. Ma—the first Chinese entrepreneur to appear on the cover of Forbes and the third-richest man in China—has a net worth that is estimated to be more than $39 billion. But despite Ma’s massive influence in China and in the global tech world, his inspirational rags-to-riches story is relatively unknown to the general American public. Jack Ma: In His Own Words is a detailed look at the thoughts and words of arguably the most prominent figure in internet entrepreneurship in the past 20 years—made up entirely of Ma’s own thought-provoking and candid quotes. Many of these quotes are translated directly from the Chinese press and interviews. For readers who do not read Chinese and have no other access to these materials, this book provides invaluable insight into the mind of one of the world’s most successful business magnates.

In September 2014, a Chinese company that most Westerners had never heard of held the largest IPO in history - bigger than Google, Facebook and Twitter combined. Alibaba, now the world's largest e-commerce company, mostly escaped Western notice for over ten years, while building a customer base larger than Amazon's, and handling the bulk of e-commerce transactions in China. How did it happen? And what was it like to be along for such a revolutionary ride? In Alibaba's World, author Porter Erisman, one of Alibaba's first Western employees, who helped spearhead its international expansion, shows how Jack Ma, a Chinese schoolteacher who twice failed his college entrance exams, rose from obscurity to found Alibaba and lead it from struggling startup to the world's most dominant e-commerce player. Now, in the first English language account of Alibaba's extraordinary success, Erisman shares stories of weathering the dotcom crash, facing down eBay and Google, negotiating with the unpredictable Chinese government, and enduring the misguided advice of foreign experts, all to build the behemoth that's poised to sweep the ecommerce world today. And he analyzes Alibaba's role as a harbinger of the new global business landscape - with its focus on the East rather than the West, emerging markets over developed ones, and the nimble entrepreneur over the industry titan. As we face this near future, the story of Alibaba - and its inevitable descendants - is both essential and instructive.

In just a decade and half Jack Ma, a man who rose from humble beginnings and started his career as an English teacher, founded and built Alibaba into the second largest Internet company in the world. The company’s $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the world’s largest, valuing the company more than Facebook or Coca Cola. Alibaba today runs the e-commerce services that hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers depend on every day, providing employment and income for tens of millions more. A Rockefeller of his age, Jack has become an icon for the country’s booming private sector, and as the face of the new, consumerist China is courted by heads of state and CEOs from around the world. Granted unprecedented access to a wealth of new material including exclusive interviews, Clark draws on his own first-hand experience of key figures integral to Alibaba’s rise to create an authoritative, compelling narrative account of how Alibaba and its charismatic creator have transformed the way that Chinese exercise their new found economic freedom, inspiring entrepreneurs around the world and infuriating others, turning the tables on the Silicon Valley giants who have tried to stand in his way. Duncan explores vital questions about the company’s past, present, and future: How, from such unremarkable origins, did Jack Ma build Alibaba? What explains his relentless drive and his ability to outsmart his competitors? With over 80% of China’s e-commerce market, how long can the company hope to maintain its dominance? As the company sets its sights on the country’s financial and media markets, are there limits to Alibaba’s ambitions, or will the Chinese government act to curtail them? And as it set up shop from LA and San Francisco to Seattle, how will Alibaba grow its presence and investments in the US and other international markets? Clark tells Alibaba’s tale within the wider story of China’s economic explosion—the rise of the private sector and the expansion of Internet usage—that haver powered the country’s rise to become the world’s second largest economy and largest Internet population, twice the size of the United States. He also explores the political and social context for these momentous changes. An expert insider with unrivaled connections, Clark has a deep understanding of Chinese business mindset. He illuminates an unlikely corporate titan as never before, and examines the key role his company has played in transforming China while increasing its power and presence worldwide.

This book examines China’s new development policies, which seek to reposition China from export platform for a diverse array of low-cost consumer goods to technological leader in sectors linked to advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, e-commerce, and new internet-related production networks oriented to China’s large domestic market. Focusing on the post-2010 period, the book shows how China’s central government programs and reforms (“upgrading from above”) are coupled with a wide variety of local government policies, firm strategies, and domestic economy shifts (“upgrading from below”) that link China’s top-down programs into industrial growth on the ground. Placing China’s current development push within a global value chain (GVC) context shows how Chinese development strategies and the global economy remain intertwined. This volume brings together international GVC experts and China-based researchers who have carried out detailed fieldwork and industry specific quantitative analyses of GVCs and development with important implications for policymakers in both developed and developing economies.

Jack Ma is a Chinese business magnate who is the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a conglomerate of Internet-based businesses. He is one of China's richest men, as well as one of the wealthiest people in Asia. He has become a global icon in business and entrepreneurship, one of the world's most influential businessmen, and a philanthropist known for expounding his philosophy of business. He was ranked 2nd in Fortune's 2017 "World's 50 Greatest Leaders" list. Ma is one of the world's most powerful people, and has been a global inspirer and role model to many, he also gave numerous lectures, enlightenments and advices throughout his life career.