Alibaba, which Jack Ma and a branch ofcollaborators started in a cramped apartment in Hangzhou in 1999, is now one ofthe biggest world’s internet companies. It utterly dominates the e-commerce inChina, and has also made inroads into internet finance, cloud computing andlogistics. Its flotation in New York in 2014 was the biggest public offeringever, and with a fortune worth perhaps 23 billion dollars, Mr Ma is one ofChina’s richest men.

Like John Rockefeller, the founder ofStandard Oil Company, Jack Ma was seen as a businessman that defined a country’stransformation. But how did a poor boy who struggled three times into a teacher’scollege manages this. In the year 2000 and 2001, the rise of the internet camewhen China was gearing up to join the World Trade Organisation, Jack Ma spottedand grasped the confluence of technologies and market opportunities. In thiscentury, internet and technology make difference.

As an English translator, he got the chanceto travel Seattle in the middle-1990 and to use the internet for the firsttime. That gave him the inspiration he needed. With liberalization would comerising incomes and global travel, hundreds of millions of Chinese would applyfor the goods and services enjoyed by the comfortable classes elsewhere. Unlikethose in America, the land of Sears and Walmart, China’s retail chain werefragmented. Mr Ma calculated that e-commerce could quickly become a potentforce and he was right.

However, all things were not always romantic.He and his collaborators, they made so many mistakes in the past years and hesaid the only book he dreamed to write is” Alibaba, one thousand and onemistakes”. Here, he shared some points from his experiences what he did when hewas in trouble and sent some views about economic trend in the future.

From microeconomic perspective

Customer number one

It has been suggested that shareholdersnumber one for any companies, while he always believe that customer number onebecause the customers give you money, innovation and customers make you happy. Year1999 when internet bubble burst, his team had nothing. But the only thing that encouragingthem to go on was the letter of thanks and email from their customers. So letus depend on customers because they stay with you and they grow up with you. Todayif we come to the view about shareholder number one, we would only think aboutrevenues and how to make the stock market go up. And no shareholders can betrusted because most of shareholders are share traders.

Serve your employees

It is our team and our employees that makedifference. Sometimes, big companies face various kinds of problems in gettinginnovations and they do not know how to make things happen. Jack Ma thought aboutthat and said” because big companies do not listen to their employees and paymuch attention on shareholders”. Shareholders change all the time but ouremployees would stay with us. Year 2000 and 2001, it was a tough time for him,there was only one group of people stayed with Jack, his colleagues. Moreover, hesaid” if we believe our employees are talents, they are talent people”.

Learn from your competitors

It is true that competitors could make yourstrong. Without competitors, Alibaba would not grow up at this high speed. Year2003 when they started Taobao, is a C2C model. While eBay is their competitor,at that time with 80 million dollars, as a result, eBay became a lunch forAlibaba. Jack said “competitors are best laboratory for us because we can learna lot from every decision and move that they made. Competitors are everywhereand we should look for example to make us grow up.

From macroeconomic perspective

Technology

In that case, we have to discuss thetechnology revolutions that could shape the human civilization. In the courseof human events, the first technology revolution is to release the energy ofthe people, therefore people is going to be powerful and machine is going to bemore powerful than human. The second energy revolution is to make people to gofurther. Machine is much faster and stronger. By using machine, we can go farto the Mars and Moon. In addition, today, the third revolution which ishappening right now, is to release the human brains. And we believe no one canstop it whether you like it or you do not. Our lives will be totally changed inthe next 30 years, those people who change them to suit this revolution, theywill be winner, those who do not, will be the looser.

Innovation

It is true that the excellent business people try to see the tomorrowto understand today. Jack said” in the future, I believe date is going to befundamental materials just like water, electricity and oil resources in ourlives. For example, before people understand how to use the oil, people cannever image today we will use this energy to go to the moon. Today, most of uswe do not know how to use the data, you will never image what data can changehuman beings in 30 years later.

Another point is that innovation is going to create more jobs. Destroyingthe job opportunities, we are see one thing, we create more jobs than wethought after every revolution. For example, in 1870, more 50 percent of jobsin US were farmers while this figure went down to 2 percent after 100 years. Howpeople can tell 100 years ago, innovation can create more jobs. China is thesame.20 years ago, China had a huge industry called real estate and there werehundreds of thousands of people work in the construction fields. But todaythere is no real estate market, those people, they go to the express deliverydue to the development of e-commerce.

Economy

People are always talking about world economy has big problems. In thepast 50 years, we met financial crisis every 9 year and today we almost haveproblems every year. That is to send a strong signal. In the 21 century, is notabout how fast our machine is, is not about how equipment we have, is about howquickly we change ourselves to meet the market. Our economy is upgrading, whichis moving from old economy to services, high technology and domestic session. Andexporting and investment is not going to make huge sense. In the short time, itis very painful. But for the long term, he is quite confident especially inInternet.

本文是参考了《经济学人》，“2016年G20峰会马云演讲”，还有“2009年APEC峰会马云演讲”。