Task B – Jack Ma3.1 Introduction of Jack Ma

It takes a rare person to accumulate a total net worth over $20 billion

through a devoted work ethic while maintaining a sense of perspective. As the

founder and CEO of Alibaba, one of the world’s leading e-commerce web portals,

one of the world;s richest men, Jack Ma is being categorized as a successful

entrepreneur. However, he has not let success cloud his vision for the future or

his acknowledgement of where he came from.

Jack Ma or Ma Yun was born on September 10, 1964 in Hangzhou,

Zhejiang Province, China. As the founder and executive chairman of e-

commerce giant Alibaba, China’s leading internet business entity, he is among

the topmost Chinese entrepreneurs, who made it to the coveted Forbes list in

recent years. Now Jack Ma only 52 years old in the year of 2016, he officially

becomes the second richest man in China and 33 richer man in whole world with

23.3 billion US dollar income per years. Since he was young, he has an interest

in learning English after that he started communicating with foreign tourist to

enhance his English skills. These foreigners gave him the name “Jack” because

too difficult for them to remember he Chinese name. He had failed in exam for

three times so he decided to attend teacher’s institution at Hangzhou and

completed graduate with a bachelor’s degree in English. After graduating he

work at an information technology company in the department of Foreign Trade

and Economic Cooperation. After working for a year, he decided to quit and

started an online business when computers had not yet becomes a household

item in china. Finally he has persuading 17 of his other friends to invest and join

him in his new e-commerce startup that is Alibaba. With the help of friends he

started Alibaba just with $6000 to create an online business platform, now he has

become a $23.3 billion USD company. After consolidating the position of Alibaba,

Jack Ma shifted focus to consumer-to-consumer platform. TaoBao was formed in

2003. His strategy to keep it free affected the profits and drew widespread

criticism, but he was unruffled. TaoBao gained a majority of market share in two

years. The courage to take on an established giant like eBay and emerge a

winner is no mean feat. Jack Ma is now worth an estimated $25 billion, which

includes his 7.8% stake in Alibaba and a nearly 50% stake in payment

processing service Alipay. Jack Ma has emerged as the symbol of China’s rise to

number one in internet and mobile phone users. Jack Ma was invited for giving a

speech in many Stanford University in United State. Jack Ma was chosen by the

World Economic Forum as young Global Leader in 2001, and selected by China

Central Television as one of the Top 10 business leaders by year 2004. In the

year 2009 he was listed in Top 30 Most Influence Person in the World’s. Just like

what Jack Ma always said “Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse,

but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine”, and this is what Jack Ma to be

today.

3.2 Networked

Alibaba Group is the China’s leading internet business entity that influenced the

entire economy and internet industry in China. The company grows rapidly,

expanding all across the world out of China shell. Jack Ma is the founder and

chairman for Alibaba Group and he is the topmost Chinese entrepreneurs

through networking. Here are some evidences to support that Jack Ma had

shown the trait of being networked. As we all know, Alibaba Group is begun in

1999. The primary company of Alibaba is Alibaba.com, which is the largest online

trading platform that provides sales services through web portals. Over 240

countries and religions handled by the English language portal Alibaba.com are

being importers and exporters. TaoBao is the Alibaba’s consumer-to-consumer

portal that is similar to eBay.com. It has nearly a billion products in the platform

and it was the second most visited web site in China in January 2015 according

to Alexa.com. TaoBao had remained a commission free marketplace for all the

online traders and it also put Alibaba under significant financial strain. It is

undeniably that Jack Ma has emerged as the symbol of China’s rise to number

one in the Internet and mobile phone users. His e-commerce firm, Alibaba

Group, whose IPO in New York in 2014 set a record as the world’s biggest public

stock offering has made a swath of deals, creating a sports division with Chinese

partners and forming an online portal with U.S. department store Macy’s. Alibaba

chose to list its shares in the U.S. instead of Hong Kong because the city’s

exchange was concerned about how much control Ma and other partners have

over the company’s board. Obama, the president of U.S also offered a chance

for the charismatic Ma to impress his host at the same time. Alibaba is focused

on growing its brand in the U.S and more attracting U.S brands to its TaoBao and

Tmall platforms in mainland China. Over the past six years, Alibaba Group has

made a significant strategic investment in cloud computing and big data services.

This is because mankind is departing the IT era and entering a new era of DT

(data technology). In the society of tomorrow, data will be the most important

means of production, innovation and social development. Jack Ma had use the

network wisely on his Alibaba Group that bring benefits for consumers and

suppliers to run their business with a more low capital. There are many

companies and affiliated entities under Alibaba Group and some is had spread all

over the world and known by everyone.

3.3 Open Risk Taker

Furthermore, Jack Ma is also an open risk taker. As an entrepreneur, risk is one

of the consequence factor that necessary to be faced. Jack Ma always takes

risks as a challenges in order to achieve his goals. Jack Ma takes risks by

accepting the mistakes and failures as the point to motivate him so that he can

do better for the next. Moreover, he is never tired of finding ways to improve

himself to achieve his organization goals. He also takes the risk to challenge the

status quo supported by many years of conventional wisdom about business and

competition in this digital age. As an illustration, he controlled the retail platform,

Tmall, the online setting, TaoBao, and disallowing index of Taobao. In addition,

Jack Ma sticked to the strategy of locking in shoppers at the beginning and at the

end of their excursions which made him captured huge market share

successfully. Alibaba has been on a major spending spree, pouring money into

acquisitions and partnerships even though some of the investments are paying

off. In order to bring the organization to the international level, it is important for

the leader to possess the trait of open risked.

3.4 Open Culture

Open culture refers to a concept according to the knowledge should be spread

freely and its growth should come from developing, altering or enriching already

existing works on the basis of sharing and collaboration, without being restricted

by rules linked to the legal protection of intellectual property. Open culture in

simple also means a companies continue to expand their presence across the

globe, dealing with different cultures, lifestyle and demographics. Open culture is

very wide practised by many companies nowadays to promote their businesses

to the international level. Jack Ma, who is the founder and kinetic leader of

Alibaba group, is a very successful entrepreneur that mixes the best Western

and Chinese Technologies, culture and management to create the world’s

biggest e-commerce company. Jack Ma is not only focused on just e-commerce

company through the platforms of TaoBao (consumer to consumer company),

Tmall (the business to consumer firm) and Alibaba.com (business to business

operation) is also help to generate income up to $7.9 billion. The company also

invested in streaming entertainment and supply-chain infrastructure. In addition,

Alibaba has always preached patience. Company executives frequently say

Alibaba is “customer first, employee second, shareholder third”. Moreover,

“Compared to 50 years ago, we are big,” Ma said about Alibaba. “ But compared

to 50 years later, we are small. But if we do not care about this Earth, we do not

care about the water, food, environment, I think nobody can survive whether

you’re big or small. So this is the concern. This is the worry I have.” He is

investing in China's fast-growing movie industry and it is the third largest

shareholder of mainland studio Huayi Brothers. He is also China chairman of The

Nature Conservancy, a job he accepted the day after he stepped down as

Alibaba chief executive. Ma said he was not attracted to the roles by the potential

to make money. Instead, what motivated him was a belief that they were things

that China needed for the future. "One issue facing China is that people's wallets

are bulging but their heads are empty," he said. China’s large and growing economy

has made it an increasing economic force over the last two decades, but it had not

produced global companies. Chinese businesses focused domestically and mass-

produced products for international companies. Jack Ma is taking a different approach.

Alibaba has initially concentrated on China’s enormous markets, but he understands the

Internet is a worldwide phenomenon that knows no borders. He believes that Alibaba

can compete internationally and across sectors, and intends to serve the American,

European and emerging markets and he has plans to disrupt China’s commercial

banking and insurance sectors as well.

3.5 Visionary

Jack Ma is a successful entrepreneur who has the entrepreneurial traits of

visionary. It currently has 300m people transacting through its web portals,

about a third of them chalking up 60m transactions daily, with 10m small

businesses, mostly within China. Jack Ma’s vision is “If we can help a small

business in Norway sell things to Argentina, and Argentina consumers can buy

things online from Switzerland, we can build up an e-WTO. WTO is great but last

century. Today, the internet can help small business sell things across the

oceans. I hope we can serve 2bn consumers and help 10m small businesses

outside China.” His priorities for the next decade will be globalization,

development of the rural economy and big data. In terms of globalization, Jack

Ma aim to help small-to medium-sized businesses around the world expand

beyond their borders by leveraging the power of e-commerce, Internet financing,

big data and marketing and logistics platforms. Therefore, the experience of

Alibaba Group in China can be applied globally, and provide the opportunity to all

SMEs to participate and compete in a transparent and fair marketplace. As a

result, the future economic globalization will allow consumers everywhere to

access a truly global purchasing experience. Because of the tremendous market

potential, it also close the digital divide, promote information equity and help

alleviate poverty through economic opportunity. Besides that, Jack Ma also aims

to see that Alibaba exceeding Walmart in sales in ten years’ time. Along with his

grand vision for his group, Jack Ma also told participants that success comes

with heavy responsibility of ensuring that he and his team live up to the public

trust bestowed on them. His own commitment to a cause larger than himself has

propelled him onward. His vision is to build an e-commerce ecosystem that allows

consumers and businesses to do all aspects of business online. He also aims to create

one million jobs, change China’s social and economic environment and make it the

largest Internet market in the world.

3.6 Observant

Observant is a skill that is good of notice thing, follow rules and requirements of

particular religion. Jack Ma is one of the observant and successful entrepreneur

in the world. He has shown his observant behind his road to success. “Never

give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be

sunshine”, quoted by Jack Ma. He manages to recognize needs and wants of

people. Jack Ma always aware about the changer of the surrounding world. Jack

Ma realized that many people nowadays has addicted and depended on internet

to search information or even products and goods. Social media such as

Facebook, Twitter, WeiBo, Line, WhatsApp, and Instagram is daily accessed by

people from all walks of life all around the world. Google is the main link to all

websites where businessman doing advertisement there to promote new product.

Jack Ma’s ideas is to set up a business online for most people using the internet

at low cost. With this, they no need to apply for lessen or even rent a place. Why

not we fully utilize this benefit since we have high technology in this 21st century.

Jack Ma set up a business based on concept shopping but online, the company

is being named as Alibaba. As we all know, online shopping is a habit for many

people by using Tao Bao (one of the subsidiary company for Alibaba) and

product will be posted directly to your home and this can save a lot of time,

especially for people who live with the hustle and bustle of the city lives. Alibaba

acts as the middle because Alibaba will connect with all the supplier to promote

their product on TaoBao website and make order with them after receiving order

from customers. This help to save a lot of cost of storage and maximize the

profit. Moreover, Jack Ma also realizes that user faced problem in finding a

product. They need to scroll online to look for the products one by one. However,

after notice this problem, Jack Ma started to categorize all products in group and

inside that group is divided again into smaller groups so that it is easier for user

find a product. Therefore, these show that Jack Ma has been an observer

entrepreneur always care about the problem faced by user and being creative

and innovative.

References:

1. The world billionaire – Jack Ma

http://www.forbes.com/profile/jack-ma/

2. Alibaba: The year that Jack Ma would like to forget

http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/18/investing/jack-ma-alibaba-ipo-year/

3. These Are the Super-Rich People Shaping China

http://fortune.com/2015/11/11/alibaba-singlesday-record-2015/

4. Alibaba Group Shareholders

http://ar.alibabagroup.com/2015/letter.html

5. Jack Ma on Alibaba, Entrepreneurs and the Role of Handstands

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/jack-ma-on-alibaba-entrepreneurs-and-

the-role-of-handstands/?_r=0

6. The secret to Alibaba’s culture is Jack Ma’s Apartment

https://hbr.org/2014/06/the-secret-to-alibabas-culture-is-jack-mas-apartment

7. Alibaba Jack Ma’s vision : Helping small businesses sell things overseas

http://realbusiness.co.uk/article/29037-alibaba-jack-mas-vision-helping-small-

businesses-sell-things-overseas

8. Jack Ma presents his long- term vision for Alibaba (BABA)

http://www.bidnessetc.com/33233-jack-ma-presents-his-longterm-vision-for-

alibaba-baba/