Alibaba's World

Author: Porter Erisman
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 146687886X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
In September 2014, a Chinese company that most Americans 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 more than twice the size of 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 and its head of international marketing from 2000 to 2008, 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. He 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.

alibaba

Author: Liu Shiying
Publisher: HarperBusiness
ISBN: 9780061672194
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The first in-depth look at the multibillion-dollar company Alibaba.com—known to many as "China's eBay"—and the inspirational story behind the man who created it. A bestseller in China and now translated into English and updated with recent events, Alibaba by Liu Shiying and Martha Avery tells the remarkable story behind the Internet phenomenon Alibaba.com and its founder Jack Ma, a man Barron's named one of the World's Top 30 CEOs in 2008. Ma's rise to prominence presents a riveting story: Despite growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution—in a period of total state control of the economy—he developed the keen entrepreneurial instincts that propelled him to billionaire status and enabled him to build a company outside the usual government channels. These instincts and habits incorporated martial arts training and allowed him to recognize, early on, that the Internet could leverage his company to rapid growth and also transform the way business is done around the world. Alibaba.com, where businesses can buy and sell everything from air beds to zippers, started with a modest initial investment of $60,000 and has grown exponentially since its founding in 1999 to become the world's biggest business-to-business Web site. In 2007 it became the second largest IPO in history (after Google), and Fast Company has named it one of the world's most innovative companies. As a result, smart investors and technology insiders will be keeping a close eye on Alibaba for years to come. Whether you're seeking to understand China's meteoric rise, or just searching for the next Google, Yahoo!, or Amazon, Alibaba is crucial reading.

Alibaba

Author: Duncan Clark
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062413422
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Book Description
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.

The Alibaba Way: Unleashing Grass-Roots Entrepreneurship to Build the World's Most Innovative Internet Company

Author: Ying Lowrey
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 1259585417
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 349

Book Description
The amazing e-commerce success story that provides a powerful new growth model for small business start-ups and grassroots entrepreneurs One of the world’s fastest growing Internet companies, Alibaba and its founder Jack Ma have inspired a generation of young Chinese—not just as a road map to riches, but as a lesson in entrepreneurial individualism. This illuminating guide takes readers inside this global giant of e-commerce and shows entrepreneurs how to build their own businesses from a grassroots vision to a world-class operation. Using Alibaba’s incredible success as a case study, the book identifies the driving forces behind job growth, innovation, and sustainability in the Digital Age. It shows small business owners how to unleash their entrepreneurial spirit, realize their grassroots ambitions, and use technology-driven platforms to grow their companies across multiple markets. The Alibaba Way offers a proven way to survive and thrive. The first book-length case study of the Alibaba phenomenon Alibaba is receiving incredible positive coverage in the media—its IPO is likely to be the largest in the US and one of the largest in the world Dr. Lowry is an expert in Chinese economics with experience in American markets Dr. Ying Lowrey is an Economics Professor at the School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, and Deputy Director of Tsinghua Research Center for Chinese Entrepreneurs.

Smart Business

Author: Ming Zeng
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1633693309
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Book Description
How Strategy Works in an Interconnected, Automated World Leaders already know that the classic approach to strategy--analyze, plan, execute--is losing relevance. But they don't yet know what replaces it. As everyone and everything becomes more interconnected and digitized, how do you operate, compete, and win? Ming Zeng, the former Chief of Staff and strategy adviser to Alibaba Group's founder Jack Ma, explains how the latest technological developments, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, the mobile internet, and cloud computing are redefining how value is created. Written especially for those outside the technology industry or the startup arena, this book introduces a simple, overarching framework to guide strategy formulation and execution in this data-rich and highly interactive environment. Revealing the revolutionary practices that he and his team have developed at Alibaba, Zeng shows how to: Automate decisions through machine learning Create products informed by real-time data from customers Determine the right strategic positioning to maximize value from platforms and suppliers Repurpose your organization to further human insight and enable creativity Lead your company's transformation into a smart business With insights into the strategies and tools used by leaders at Alibaba and other companies such as Ruhan and Red Collar, in a variety of industries from furniture making to banking to custom tailoring, Smart Business outlines a radically new approach to strategy that can be applied everywhere.

Alibaba

Author: Hong Shen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000451992
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 92

Book Description
This book examines the political-economic dynamics in the development of a leading global Internet giant: Alibaba. As both a prominent example of, as well as providing the basic infrastructure for, China’s outward expansion, Alibaba demonstrates the complex interplay between different state agencies and units of capital in the context of the rise of global China. Hong Shen investigates the development and expansions of Alibaba and discusses how Alibaba has not only become a leader of China’s increasingly globalizing internet but has also increasingly served as a basic infrastructure model for other Chinese companies to go global. Shen also addresses how this process has been constantly shaped and reshaped by complex state-capital interactions along the way. This book shows how different units of capital, both inside and outside of China, have interacted with Alibaba’s developmental strategies and illustrates how different state agencies, both domestic and international, have enabled or constrained the company’s development, especially its global expansion. This book will appeal to students and scholars of critical political economy of media, global media and digital industries, communication, technology and society, and internet studies. It will also be relevant to policy-makers working in the arena of global internet and trade policies.

Six Billion Shoppers

Author: Porter Erisman
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250088682
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Book Description
An insightful, practical guide to e-commerce in emerging markets--and how to profit from their explosive boom. From China to India to Nigeria, e-commerce is entering a golden era in countries that were long left out of the e-commerce gold rush experienced in the West. If the story of the first twenty years of e-commerce’s growth was set in developed markets, the story of the next twenty years will be set in emerging ones. The rise of e-commerce in emerging markets is being driven by three major trends: widespread internet adoption, a rising middle class, and, most importantly, innovative new business models that serve the needs of local customers better than the models used by western e-commerce giants. Six Billion Shoppers takes readers on an exciting and colorful journey around the world to visit the next e-commerce mega markets and explore how a new e-commerce boom is opening opportunities for entrepreneurs and global brands alike. Traveling through Nigeria, China, India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, Porter Erisman addresses e-commerce across these new markets and what it means for western brands. He argues that e-commerce in developing countries is revolutionary and will play a much larger role in emerging markets than in the West. With e-commerce in emerging markets entering a rapid period of expansion, Six Billion Shoppers explains how to seize the massive opportunity created by emerging market consumers and provides practical advice on how to ride this new business trend.

Driven to the Brink

Author: Alicia Micklethwait
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113759053X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
Driven to the Brink is a collection of short stories about corporate disasters and how inadequate governance and flawed culture caused a massive destruction of shareholder value. Look at any major corporate meltdown and two factors emerge: a failure of corporate governance and a culture where short-termism and greed are rewarded and risk is encouraged to flourish unchecked. Two years before the latest crash, Alicia Micklethwait co-wrote the best-selling Greed and Corporate Failure which examined some of the high profile corporate disasters of the early years of the 21st century. Sadly those lessons were forgotten. Companies have continued to be Driven to the Brink of disaster. Now, with co-author Patty Dimond, they examine what we must learn this time around. Drawing on in-depth case studies of the Libor scandal, Olympus, Co-op, Kids Company and others, Dimond and Micklethwait ask what have we learned and more importantly, what can we do to prevent these disasters from happening again? They also examine the large, emerging and less widely understood world of Corporate China with detailed discussion of the Lixel and Glaxo frauds. On a positive note, staying with China, they look at the story of Alibaba and ask is an ethical culture enough to protect shareholder rights?

The Official Alibaba.com Success Guide

Author: Brad Schepp
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470496452
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
The official guide to making a bundle buying and selling through Alibaba.com, the world's largest online B2B marketplace Alibaba.com is the world's leading global business-to-business online marketplace. People around the world use it every day to import and export products for big profits. But newcomers are often overwhelmed by the sheer number of products and the quantity of information available. The Official Alibaba.com Success Guide shows you how to ramp up your business or build an entirely new business, using the Alibaba.com brand and web site as your supplier. This practical guide provides simple answers for complex questions, from navigating the site, to finding products at the right price, to branding, and much more. Plus, the book includes best practices for importing, locating and vetting suppliers, and protecting yourself against online fraud. • An answer-packed guide for all your questions about doing business through Alibaba.com • Officially licensed and supported by Alibaba.com, this is the only guide you need • Includes inspirational profiles of people who have used Alibaba.com successfully to launch new businesses or revive old ones • The first and only step-by-step guide to using Alibaba.com effectively Alibaba.com gives you the opportunity to make real money online. Here, you'll find a wealth of inside information that will help you use Alibaba.com safely and profitably.

Jack Ma & Alibaba

Author: Yan Qicheng
Publisher: China's Leading Entrepreneurs and Enterprises
ISBN: 9781911498261
Category : Businesspeople
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Today, Jack Ma (Ma Yun) is one of the giants of the Internet world. His company, Alibaba, has become the world's largest e-commerce platform. The rise of Jack Ma and Alibaba is integral to the rise of China's enormous Internet economy. This book presents Ma's life experiences, entrepreneurial career and the whole process of Alibaba's creation. By going behind the scenes, the authors show how Ma subverted traditions and built Alibaba into a behemoth, that set a world record as the world's largest public stock offering during its IPO in New York in 2014.