Science and Technology Innovation & Business Opportunity——Alibaba Study Tour
Between August 3rd and 5th, led by teachers from the EMBA Center of Lingnan College, Sun Yat-sen University, 40 EMBA students walked into Alibaba and began their first stop with Cloud University. The cooperative course is called ‘Science and Technology Innovation & Business Opportunity’.
In the opening ceremony, Xu Dong, vice president of Ali Cloud China District and CEO of Ali Cloud Eastern China, and Cai Rongxin, director of EMBA Center from Lingnan College Sun Yat-sen University each gave the students welcome speeches. During the three-day intensive study tour, students attended lessons given by several senior managers from the HR department of Alibaba, including Rookie Network, Ali Cloud University, O2O business department, Tmall Think Tank and several other excellent cooperative institutions inside the Alibaba system. The lecturers explained and analyzed in detail mainly about the developing processes of Alibaba, its key decisions and its turning point, as well as corporate culture, and the value of management. They also conducted a field investigation in Hema Fresh, a newly emerged retail chains focusing on fresh food.
In lecture on how Alibaba thinks about the innovation of organizational culture, a manager described Alibaba’s current situation so that the students could learn a new lesson from this example.
In the Tai Chi Zen Garden, students also developed a deeper understanding towards Alibaba’s corporate management philosophy combined with Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism.
In the lecture of ‘Industry Internet and Platform Strategy’, CSO of Rookies fully presented how the Digital Era changed how businesses are run, how the Digital Era platformized core thinking, and how to take specific actions and the strategy paths.
In the lecture of ‘Science Drives Business Innovation’, a senior manager from Alibaba described several challenges brought about by technological innovation and made it clearer to the students about the relationship among the evolution of industrialization, the changes in organizational patterns, and the new technology models. He emphasized how “corporate had to embrace changes positively and had to dare to go ‘all in’ under these critical transition circumstances.”
As for the special topic on how Alibaba thinks about business model innovation, students learned about Alibaba Electronic Commerce Group, Ant Financial Services Group, and China Smart Logistics backbone network. Additionally, students learned about cloud computing and how big data formed and developed the logic of Ali’s diverse business. Moreover, students fully learned Jack Ma’s wisdom as an outstanding entrepreneur, who cultivated real understanding of some sayings such as ‘To see is to believe,’, ‘Build the roof when it’s still sunny,’ ‘Give birth to more babies when still young’ and so forth.
The lecture on ‘Innovation of IRM in Data Technology Era systematically combed the organizational models and analyzed frequently asked questions in the organizational models and organizational designs in Data Technology Era..
‘Three ways to manage’ fully introduced and analyzed management level in Alibaba, and explained the standards of three ways to manage and the wisdom behind these three ways. Also it gave the students a vivid interpretation of management methods and requirements of the grass-root, middle and senior managers.
As short as three days were, there was a lot of information introduced. Students all told us that the courses taught at Alibaba benefited them a lot and were very useful in solving their problems.
Dong Yezhen from grade 2016 even wrote a long article:
The success of Alibaba cannot be attained without both non-accidental factors and accidental factors. There are four non-accidental factors. First, I believe. We all believe. Second, I insist. We all insist. Third, I keep studying. We all keep studying. Finally, we are doing the right thing and we are also trying to do the things right. Jack Ma made his strategy based on the current and potential situation and his decisions kept being proved right, which was definitely not accidental factors. Accidental factors happened when they made a right judgement about the future. For example, when Taobao was issued, SARS created outside environment for home shopping. Some businessman wanted to imitate Alibaba, but the same success could only be achieved once. There are a lot of uncertain factors for corporations found in different backgrounds. If they 100% imitate Alibaba’s actions, it will not work, for sure. But some of the experience can be repeated. Our times are changing, and accidental factors are so uncertain. The only thing that will not change a bit are our methods.
Taobao came from offline to online within 10 years. This fact was also a great shock to many small corporations. If there were no Taobao, would there be YKbao? Would there be other apps? We cannot defeat trends and trends will not change according anyone’s or any organization’s mind. It is best to get used to it. Today, the platform goes to offline and the offline is being platformized. Who knows what will occur in another ten years? We should prepare in advance and know where we are going. Commercial models, organizational structure and strategic planning should support each other.
EMBA of Lingnan College started cooperation with Alibaba system from this study tour. This was a significant act of insisting ‘Keeping pace with the times and exploring the way of education.’ With rapid technology innovation and business model evolution, EMBA of Lingnan College must have the determination and confidence to lead innovation and embrace chances. We should strive to actively introduce outstanding corporations like Alibaba. Students in EMBA should also study harder and do more field research to see the inside of those corporations and talk with the senior managers. Only by seeing it themselves, can they know better about these corporations, and the truth of running a business and how hard making a decision is.
