Brian A Wong - The Tao of Alibaba: Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That Is Changing the World

F rom the time that I began writing this book two years ago up till its completion, the world has changed in ways we never imagined. The global pandemic has incurred psychological and physiological trauma upon the world that will last a lifetime. Climate change has become undeniable as breaking news stories on unprecedented cyclone bombs and shocking melting polar ice caps have become regular news stories. The war in Ukraine and US-China relations have exposed geopolitical fault lines reigniting concerns of a new cold war. In short, a myriad of existential crises are now facing not just one or a few countries but all of humanity.

Jack Ma, Alibabas founder, constantly reminded us where most people complain is where the opportunity is and where there is trouble there is opportunity. If thats the case then one could say that today there is a massive opportunity before all of us. And what it requires is a major mind-set shift in thinking about how we can solve these existential crises using the tools at our disposal.

In writing this book, I set out to make the case that todays unique technological era offers us the potential to become part of the solution to many of todays global problems and that the ethos Alibaba has developed and shared is the road map. Seeing is believing, and Alibaba has shown time after time how it can be done.

This is a book about a company, Alibaba, that not just shaped a huge industry, e-commerce, but also impacted an entire country, China, on its digital journey that began with few if any of the attributes most say are necessary for a typical successful start-up. What it did have was Jack Ma, an unconventional, visionary entrepreneur who has described his unlikely path as being like a blind man riding on the back of a blind tiger. Asked once during a conference at Harvard about the secret to Alibabas spectacular rise to dominance, Jack, who loves to sound outrageous, said: Alibaba succeeded because we (1) had no plan, (2) no technology, and (3) no money.

But Alibaba had what turned out to be more powerful guiding attributesa truly deep sense of purpose, a social equity mission, and a focus on spreading a new type of inclusive, shared wealth, all built on a management foundation that placed the importance of values above key performance indicators (KPIs). Its founder had an intuitive understanding of the companys first base of customers, the underserved small and medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs in need of help. Given the right encouragement and education from Alibaba, those ambitious entrepreneurs, Jack knew, would seize the opportunities in the vast new frontier of 1s and 0s.

Alibabas digital model both benefited from the remarkable dynamism of Chinas economyone of the most far-reaching explosions of prosperity in history following the launch of the governments economic reform programs in the 1980sand energized it. At the same time, Alibabas rapidly expanding platform helped to spread prosperity to overlooked regions and businesses in new and transformational ways.

I was the first American and the fifty-second employee of this unusual company, spending countless hours toiling, initially beside my colleagues on unmatched sets of chairs and couches in Jacks apartment in the provincial city of Hangzhou, and saw it struggle through its early years, even a near bankruptcy, and I can assure you that Jack, though delighting in sounding irreverent, was using only a little hyperbole in his descriptions of our early days of no plan, no technology, and no money. But I grew to admire and embrace his mission and, especially, the power of the distinctive model that he articulated. Its a model that is replicable and can be employed by leaders or organizations to make them better, more efficient, and more socially impactful.