Smart Business: What Alibaba's Success Reveals about the Future of Strategy

by Ming Zeng

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781633693296
Publisher:	Harvard Business Review Press
Publication date:	09/04/2018
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Ming Zeng was the Chief of Staff and strategy adviser to Jack Ma at Alibaba Group for over a decade (2006-2017) as it blossomed into a $400 billion company. He is currently Chairman of the Academic Council of Alibaba Group and Dean of Hupan School of Entrepreneurship, founded by Ma and other Chinese business leaders. Previously, he taught at INSEAD and, in 2002, he was one of the seven professors who founded Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing. He wrote one of the first cases on Alibaba in 2000. The book he coauthored with Peter Williamson, Dragons at Your Door (Harvard Business Review Press), remains one of the most cited books about the strategies of leading Chinese companies.

Author social media/website info: linkedin.com/in/ming-zeng-7ba269117

Table of Contents

Foreword Jack Ma ix

Introduction: Why You Need to Know about Alibaba 1

Part 1 Alibaba: The Emergence of a Smart Business

1 The New Forces of Value Creation 19

2 Network Coordination: How Interconnected Players Change the Game 29

3 Data Intelligence: How Machine Learning Uses Data to Make Business Smart 51

Part 2 How Smart Businesses Compete: Strategic Principles

4 Automating Decisions: How to Strategically Leverage Machine Learning 73

5 The Customer-to-Business Model: How to Build a Feedback Loop 89

6 Positioning: How to Create Value in a Network 113

Part 3 How Smart Business Run: Organizational Implications

7 Self-Tuning: How to Make Strategic Processes Smart 137

8 From Managing to Enabling: How to Retool the Organization 157

9 The Future of Smart Business: What It Means for You 183

Appendix A Alibaba and Its Affiliated Businesses 195

Appendix B The Evolution of Taobao as a Smart Ecosystem 209

Appendix C Conceptual Foundations 249

Notes 263

Further Beading 275

Index 279

Acknowledgments 295

About the Author 297

Editorial Reviews

ADVANCE PRAISE for Smart Business:

Harry Shum, Executive Vice President, Microsoft AI and Research Group--
"In an era when artificial intelligence and machine learning-technologies are redefining our entire society, it will be critical for companies around the globe to similarly remodel how they approach business strategy. Ming Zeng's Smart Business is an essential read for all executives and leaders who do not want to be left behind as new trends in AI shape our increasingly interconnected world."

Eric Schmidt, former Executive Chairman, Google and Alphabet--
"Ming Zeng makes the crucial connections between theory and practice, scale and growth dynamics, and changing managerial principles and the importance of creative talent. In my experience, people are hungry for ideas. Ming Zeng has put them in a unifying context and actionable format."

Michael Spence, Nobel Prize–winning economist; professor, NYU Stern School of Business--
"Smart Business is an important book. Most readers will have encountered artificial intelligence, algorithms, machine learning, cloud computing, and automation. But few of us have any intimate contact with how these digital technologies are forming the building blocks of new, flat, networked business organizations and the ecosystems in which they compete and cooperate. Ming Zeng's book closes that knowledge gap."

W. Chan Kim, BCG Chair Professor of Strategy, INSEAD; New York Times–bestselling author, Blue Ocean Shift and Blue Ocean Strategy--
"Smart Business vividly demonstrates why human creativity and innovation will become the key competencies for producing value in the future economy. In this provocative and insightful book, Ming Zeng, who has been a driver of Alibaba's cutting-edge practices, demands a radical new approach to strategy. This book is an indispensable must-read."

Peter Thiel, entrepreneur; investor; and author, #1 New York Times bestseller Zero to One--
"Ming Zeng shows why Alibaba is not just China's Amazon: online commerce looks very different when there are no incumbent retailers and no legacy logistics. In this sense, China has truly started from zero."

From the Publisher