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Jack Ma steps into ‘mistakes’ brouhaha to boost Alibaba’s morale in staff memo, eliciting support from Chinese Embassy in US

  • ‘We hacked away at the big-company disease,’ and ‘turned the company from a cumbersome organisation into one that is simple and agile,’ Ma wrote
  • After Ma’s memo was published, the Chinese Embassy in the United States posted it on X, formerly known as Twitter

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Alibaba Group co-founder and executive chairman Jack Ma attends the opening debate of the 2018 edition of the WTO public forum on sustainable trade, on October 2, 2018 at the WTO headquarters in Geneva. Photo: AFP
Daniel Renin Shanghai
Alibaba Group Holding has fundamentally changed its corporate culture to put customers first in its adaptation of technology, its co-founder Jack Ma wrote, as he stepped into a social media hubbub over the hubris that caused what was once the world’s largest e-commerce platform to lose ground to competitors.
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“We hacked away at the big-company disease,” according to Ma’s memo to Alibaba employees. “We turned the company from a cumbersome organisation into one that is simple and agile, where efficiency comes first, and the market comes first.”

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) will upend the e-commerce industry of today, because that time span is like a century in the internet era, wrote Ma, who remains influential in Alibaba as the company’s largest single shareholder, even after his 2019 retirement. “The AI era has just arrived. Everything has just begun, and we are in the moment!”
Ma’s memo to staff echoes a podcast interview made last week by executive chairman Joe Tsai, when the Alibaba co-founder conceded to Norges Bank Investment Management’s CEO Nicolai Tangen that “mistakes” had been made by the company since its establishment in Ma’s Hangzhou flat in 1999.
A screengrab of Alibaba Group Holding’ co-founder and executive chairman Joe Tsai (right) with Nikolai Tangen of Norges Bank Investment Management (left). Photo YouTube/Norges Bank Investment Management.
A screengrab of Alibaba Group Holding’ co-founder and executive chairman Joe Tsai (right) with Nikolai Tangen of Norges Bank Investment Management (left). Photo YouTube/Norges Bank Investment Management.

“We have fallen behind because we forgot who our real customers are,” Tsai said in the podcast. “Our customers are the users who use our apps [for] shopping, and we did not give them the best experience. In a way, we stepped on our own foot and did not focus on where we can add value.”

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