#82 Growing Alibaba into the World's Largest Online Commerce Company with President Michael Evans

What this episode is about

Michael Evans, president of Alibaba, shares insights into the company's extraordinary growth into the world's largest online commerce platform, surpassing even Amazon. He recounts his unconventional career journey from banking to Alibaba, highlighting his long-standing relationship with founder Jack Ma and the unique innovations Alibaba has introduced across various sectors including fintech and luxury goods.

Key takeaways

• Alibaba isn't just a marketplace; it's an ecosystem, thriving on three pillars: domestic consumption, cloud tech, and globalization.
• China's GDP skyrocketed from $991 billion in 1999 to over $17 trillion today, showcasing explosive market potential unlike the West.
• Alibaba's globalization strategy isn't blind expansion; it targets markets with high smartphone penetration but low e-commerce development.
• Jack Ma's vision in '99 seemed crazy; fast forward—it’s a monumental success feeding off China’s digital consumption boom.
• Living in China for a decade transformed Evans from banker to e-commerce guru, proving that geography can reshape careers.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Lynn Tomman (Host) · 11 min speaking
• Michael Evans (Guest) · 25 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Jack Ma, Michael Evans, Olympic Games
2. 10:00 – 15:00: 11-11, AliExpress, Daraz, Lazada
3. 15:00 – 20:00: AliExpress
4. 20:00 – 25:00: 11-11, Daniel Zhang
5. 25:00 – 30:00: 11-11

Notable quotes from "#82 Growing Alibaba into the World's Largest Online Commerce Company with President Michael Evans"

• And Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lynn tomman welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with Michael Evans he's president of Alibaba and Alibaba of course is a…

  about Michael Evans · at 0:21

• He has known Alibaba founder Jack ma since 1999 Michael has many talents he and his twin brother rode for the Canadian Olympic team where they won a gold medal at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles welcome Michael and thanks so much for.

  about Olympic Games · at 1:11

• Working in China and Asia where I spent almost 10 years and during that period I got to know Jack ma because the bank that I was working at made a small investment in what was then alibaba.com in 1999 I continued to meet with Jack and.

  about Jack Ma · at 1:56

• And icbu which is the B2B business and then we have a lot of local businesses so we've got very big business in Southeast Asia called Lazada a great business in South Asia…

  about Lazada · at 14:21

• AliExpress can you explain what that is and what the Main Financial products that you provide are AliExpress is a business in China so it's a plat form in China it's an…

  about AliExpress · at 15:47

• Exciting for the future we think and very efficient and also very green extraordinary Alibaba recently held its 13th 1111 Global shopping Festival can you tell us about 11-11…

  about 11-11 · at 24:28

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Michael Evans — Person · Main guest · 1 mention · first at 0:29
  Primary interview subject explaining Alibaba’s strategy (China commerce, cloud, globalization), innovation model, and international expansion.
• Jack Ma — Person · Referenced founder · 2 mentions · first at 1:11
  Referenced as Alibaba’s founder and as a long-term relationship of Michael Evans (known since 1999), framing Evans’ path into Alibaba.
• Daniel Zhang — Person · Referenced executive · 1 mention · first at 24:47
  Credited with creating Alibaba’s 11.11 (Singles’ Day) shopping festival, used as a major example of Alibaba’s scale and innovation.
  What the significance of this holiday is well the most important thing to tell you is that 11-11 was created by Daniel Jen our chairman and CEO and he created it in 2009 in…

Companies & orgs

• AliExpress — Company · Business focus · 3 mentions · first at 14:19
  AliExpress is a key part of Alibaba's international strategy, connecting Chinese manufacturers with global consumers.
• Lazada — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at 14:27
  Lazada is a major part of Alibaba's Southeast Asian operations, representing its local business strategy.
• Daraz — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at 14:29
  Daraz is part of Alibaba's strategy in South Asia, expanding its e-commerce presence in the region.
  Then we have a lot of local businesses so we've got very big business in Southeast Asia called Lazada a great business in South Asia called daras another business in turkey…

Places & events

• 11-11 — Event · Case study · 5 mentions · first at 12:47
  11-11 is Alibaba's Global Shopping Festival, showcasing the company's scale and innovation in e-commerce.
• Olympic Games — Event · Personal background · 1 mention · first at 1:23
  The Olympic Games are mentioned in the context of Michael Evans' personal achievements, not directly related to Alibaba.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 welcome to the three takeaways podcast which features short memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers Business Leaders writers politicians scientists and other newsmakers each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lynn tomman welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with Michael Evans he's president of Alibaba and Alibaba of course is a Chinese multinational and it's the largest online Commerce company in the world bigger even than amazon.com each month Alibaba serves about 1 billion customers which is more than triple the population of the United States Alibaba is a fascinating company and I'm excited to learn more about their businesses which are unlike those of any Western company and I'm also

0:59 excited to learn about their Innovations from fintech to luxury goods Michael has been a board member of Alibaba since 2014 he was named president in 2015 and he has known Alibaba founder Jack ma since 1999 Michael has many talents he and his twin brother rode for the Canadian Olympic team where they won a gold medal at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles welcome Michael and thanks so much for our conversation today thank you Lynn it's great to be here with you it is wonderful to be with you Michael can you tell us about the journey that led you to Alibaba yes it's a little unconventional I started off as a banker and spent 30 years in that industry and worked all over the world but probably the most influential and the most interesting for me part of that Journey was living and working in China and Asia where I spent almost 10 years and during that period I got to know Jack ma because the bank that I was

2:05 working at made a small investment in what was then alibaba.com in 1999 I continued to meet with Jack and see Jack in the days when it was actually quite difficult to get the hung Joe even from Hong Kong and when I left Financial Services in 20134 Jack was the first guy to call and he and josi said hey come on alib Baba help us globalize the company we're going to go public at some point you can help us with that as well and I joined then and been there ever since how would you describe Alibaba to those that are less familiar with the company I think the best way to describe Alibaba is to understand our Three core strategies and this is the way that we communicate to the market but it's also the way that we talk about it internally and those strategies are very straightforward one is the core China business that you referenced in your very kind introduction the second is our Cloud technology business and the third is

3:07 globalization because if you look at Alibaba we have tens of businesses but all of those businesses fit into one of those three categories so the China Commerce business is both a b2c business and a B2B business it's online it's offline it's the business that touches those 1 billion consumers that you mentioned and it includes local Serv services and all sorts of activities which are designed to serve the consumer preference the cloud technology business was really developed and built in order to handle the scale of our own business but also to provide services to other companies small companies and large companies in China and our globalization activities are basically a combination of our expertise in core Commerce e-commerce and Cloud technology and building those businesses outside of China in different markets around the world so that's the easiest way to describe what is a massive ecosystem of

4:06 businesses and people and technology and services that we're providing Alibaba has a fascinating history of growth having created businesses that address specific social needs can you take us through the history of how Alibaba has grown and also how it is very different from Western companies I think the way that we've grown is around the three core strategies that I just mentioned so if you think about our domestic consumption business we've been the beneficiary of a wonderful Market in China when I say wonderful if you think about the size of the consumer base if you think about the rapid growth in GDP and the increasingly important role of consumption as a percentage of GDP and in particular digital consumption with the Advent of smartphones and internet Technologies that's been a huge source of growth and scale That You Don't See in many other markets in the world the best way to put this in context is to

5:10 think about where were we in 1999 and I picked that year very importantly because that's really when the internet was first introduced in China we know it was introduced long before that in the western world but that was the first year that the internet was in China if you looked at GDP then it was about 991 billion in China today as of the end of September it's about 17.1 trillion so this is a massive economy almost as big as United States and if you look at consumption back in 1999 it was about 380 billion versus 6.7 trillion today internet online there was no online consumption in 1999 and today it's about 1.6 trillion so this has just been a massive consumer Market market and domestic consumption is such a core part of everything that we've done and been able to grow I think the other piece of it is the globalization piece which is we observe the trends that have taken place in the domestic market and then

6:14 what we said is where would we find similar markets where the internet penetration and smartphone penetration is high but where Ecommerce or online is relatively small so you saw a very big Focus for us in East Asia South Asia in Russia in turkey and India markets around the world and that's a big part of how we've decided to globalize as well we take our expertise and what we learned in China and we take it to these other markets can you talk a little more about some of your businesses in China many westerners are not familiar with them and the types of businesses that you've created in China are unique to Alibaba well they're not that unique to Alibaba I mean our core Commerce business looks like a lot of Commerce activity that takes place in other parts of the world in Europe and in the US but we're doing a number of interesting things to take those capabilities to lower tier cities in

7:18 China tier four five and six cities and into local communities so we've created very interesting new businesses that are designed to serve communities and people with lower incomes so that they can be the beneficiaries of the e-commerce Revolution if you will and the digitization of the Chinese economy so that's really development of platforms and capabilities that are really very specific to the China market and probably don't have as much applicability in a western Market although maybe very very useful in other South Asian markets and Southeast Asian markets that's one aspect of it I think the other is that if you look at our technology and our Cloud business this is a service that started about 10 years ago but that has developed very rapidly and now is on a par with the capabilities of many of the best cloud companies in the world and that grew in response to the requirements of our s in

8:21 terms of being able to run it a massive scale but also our small businesses and larger businesses that needed access not only to infrastructure services but also software and product capabilities in order for them to grow so we've done things a little bit differently in China and on our platform but many of the businesses do look similar to what you would find in other parts of the world how do your businesses aimed at lower income Chinese can you talk a little more about those businesses and also the businesses and services that you provide to merchants are pretty unique can you talk about that as well I think in the lower tier cities the issue is that you're dealing with a consumer that has less disposable income so that means you need to change your assortment strategy we can't sell the same things that would sell in tier one two and three cities to people in tier five or six cities or

9:20 even in rural communities so there's a much greater focus on what assortment is appropriate and then how do we deal with the issues of fulfill and Logistics how do we actually get those products to those people because if the cost of a product is five rem andb or even two remb but the cost of fulfillment in delivery or the logistics is 10 remb then it's not going to work for us and it's not going to work for the merchants or the consumers so this then results in programs like community group buy where we figure out what large groups of people want to buy and we buy in bulk and then deliver to a common location or to several common locations that reduces the cost of logistics it allows the savings to be passed on to the consumer and the consumer gets what they need and the merchants are happy as well the product assortment is the needs are very different some people want relatively inexpensive products a lot of

10:21 agricultural products as well so it's a bespoke service and bespoke capabilities that reflect what the consumer needs and what the merchants are capable of providing and to put it in a western context you're talking about Goods that sell for one or two US Dollars and that's what you can deliver that would be an expensive product we're talking about products that sell for as little as one or two REM andb the REM andb exchange rate is roughly 6 and a half to the dollar these are very very inexpensive products all produced by small businesses so just think about the business model that allows you to provide those services that assortment and the capability to deliver a product that's that inexpensive and that's a real service I think some people get confused and think that that's a part of a social program that we're engaged in it's not at all it's part of a Model A business model that's designed to

11:19 conserve to basically serve all consumers in China not just the consumers that live in big cities or midsize cities that is extraordinary can you talk a little about the services you provide to Merchants there are many services that we provide to Merchants and we have very large merchants and we have very small Merchants so the services are in some cases very different during the pandemic for example we realized that many small businesses would have gone out of business had we not helped them with very basic things like supply chain and Logistics and even finding people that would come to work because not everybody wanted to go to work during the pandemic people were scared they didn't have information some businesses were closed so we spent a lot of time looking after the merchants small merchants on our platform to make sure they could stay in business and of course that was important to us too because we needed

12:16 their products because consumers wanted to buy those products there are going to be different services and capabilities that we provide at different times of the business cycle and I guess different times of the health cycle the larger Merchant are very very focused on what digital tools we can provide to them because what they're trying to do is to connect directly with consumers and they're very interested in the Data Insights and the digital tools that allow them to understand what do the consumers who are interested in their products really want to do so when we have 11-11 for example it's not about big sales it's about what are consumers telling you that's really interesting in terms of new product design and development because the Chinese consumer is very interested in new products from great Brands but they want certain types of things and brands are very interested in developing

13:10 products that are specific for the Chinese market we try and provide tools and services and capabilities to the brand so that they can engage with the consumer they can benefit from Data Insights they can take advantage of short form videos and live streaming and all sorts of immersive engaging content that makes the consumer experience great but tightens the relationship between the brand and the consumer Michael you lead alibaba's International efforts can you tell us about alibaba's International strategy and how you are working with companies to grow as I said earlier on the globalization or internationalization some people call it is one of the Three core strategies it's been a very very important strategic thrust for the last six or seven years and we've made a lot of progress and I think it's easiest to Define in thinking about what parts are China specific and then what parts are local outside of

14:11 China and we have very big B2B and b2c businesses that are selling products from China to the international market so those would be things like AliExpress and icbu which is the B2B business and then we have a lot of local businesses so we've got very big business in Southeast Asia called Lazada a great business in South Asia called daras another business in turkey called trendal AliExpress building local businesses in Spain and France and a very large joint venture business in Russia and those are local businesses where we're selling local products and crossb products but local products to local consumers and the combination of those two big business focuses are what Define our globalization we then have offices in many locations around the world that have what we call Embassy leaders and these leaders are very important because they're all local so Spain France Italy United States Australia New Zealand Japan Korea

15:14 they're all local leaders and they have business development teams plus IPR Specialists government relations and PR Specialists and their job is to protect the brand and reputation of Alibaba to make sure that we strictly comply with the rules regulations in these local markets and then to support the businesses and help them grow so to put all this infrastructure in place takes quite a bit of time but it's in place and it's very exciting to watch it develop but it's still a long way to go we're in the early days Michael you mentioned AliExpress can you explain what that is and what the Main Financial products that you provide are AliExpress is a business in China so it's a plat form in China it's an English-speaking app and it basically connects to about 80 countries around the world and if you go on to the AliExpress app on the platform you'll find about 150 million different products that you can purchase which are

16:14 made by Chinese manufacturers so it's a crossb business originating from China to International consumers and the big markets are in Europe United States Russia but they touch 80 countries around the world and it's the only english- speaking app that Alibaba has right now their primary focus is cross border but they're starting to build local businesses in France and Spain and they will select other countries in the future as well they're not actually providing Financial Services they're providing e-commerce and products to Consumers what do you think are the opportunities for international businesses in China in a market where there are so many nuances to navigate what do companies need to keep in mind in order to succeed in China I think for international Brands is a huge opportunity in China and just in the last almost seven years that I've been at Alibaba we've been onboarding International Brands to the teol and Teo

17:17 Global platforms which are the two big platforms for international Brands by the thousands so we have tens of thousands of international brands that are on the platform and across every category from fashion and apparel luxury toys consumer electronics you name it they're on the platform and China is a huge Market we talked about the size of the consumer base it's a wealthy Market we talked about the size of consumption as a percentage of GDP they love International Brands and I'm often asked why do they love International Brands and I think it's pretty straightforward these are products of very high quality they're safe they're reasonably priced and brands are always Reinventing the next generation of products or the next season of fashion or the next luxury design that hasn't been seen or the newest car or the latest gadet or toy or the newest iPhone and consumers love that and Chinese consumers are really

18:21 not that different than the rest of the global consuming population we all love this stuff and so they find it fascina and that's a consumer dream is to have access to all of these Brands to be able to get the products and know that they're genuine and they're safe and they're very high quality and there's a never ending development potential going forward so that's one big thing I think the second thing is if you look at the size of the market it's not possible for these Brands to open offline store locations in four or 500 cities in China takes too long it's just too expensive coming on to our plat or onto an e-commerce platform is a very very efficient way to engage directly with the Chinese consumer and grow a business over a long period of time into something truly significant the Retail Landscape in China is Advanced compared to the West in many cases because of alibaba's digital Innovations can you

19:19 tell us about some of alibaba's Innovations yeah but I think I want to address is it really more advanced I think it's different and I tell what the principal difference is is that much of the retail infrastructure in a country like United States or in countries across Western Europe has been put in place over the last 40 to 50 60 years but none of that retail infrastructure existed in China and so yes of course if you go to a Beijing or Shanghai or hungo or any one of a dozen or two dozen tier one cities you'll find a lot of retail infrastructure but if you spread out across the country into the next couple of hundred cities you don't find the offline retail infrastructure the online business e-commerce has become a very very important way for consumers that are living a long long away from a city that would have an offline location to be able to see products and buy things and for Brands to reach a huge consuming

20:22 population where they may be a thousand miles away from that consumer who's looking at their product United States probably wishes that and Europe wishes it didn't have as much offline retail infrastructure and in many respects I think China wishes it had more so it just was a function of where China started and where many of the developed countries started in terms of retail infrastructure so once that is established as a foundation then those markets developed very differently from there and so to get to your question what's happened in China like what are some of the examples of these Innovations and I think for example if you look at consumer operations what does that mean it means that brands are leveraging consumer insights in China in a way that is currently not done in other parts of the world and that's because we've developed a business which has such large scale and has so many

21:19 brands on the platform that we have enormous amounts of data which the brands can use because they have access to all of their own data and that helps them develop new products and new marketing strategies and ways to engage directly with a consumer but there are also distribution channels because remember I said that we do B Toc and B2B but we also do online and we do offline and we do 1p and 3p so Marketplace and Retail and we do dutyfree and Duty paid so you have all these different channels which are available to Brands which can be found in other markets but usually not all part of one ecos system I talked a little bit about product Innovation before but this is where brands use consumer insights but also something that we call the te- all Innovation Center where we work with Brands to basically come up with products that will be bespoke to the Chinese consumer and it can be consumer products of any

22:17 type we start to understand what does the consumer like and then we create a product for them so think about it not as B to C but C to B you don't see a lot of that in other parts of the world so these are just a few of the examples of things that we do and that are being done in China today that are quite Innovative and quite different than what you see elsewhere the idea of C to be consumer to business Innovation is really exciting can you give an example or two of products that were created this way with these kinds of insights it's particularly helpful in fashion and apparel for example example because if you think about the traditional approach of the way that products are introduced by Brands is they think first in seasons and then they have to basically design the products well before the season starts I have very little insight as to what the consumer wants their designers and their

23:19 teams come up with ideas that they think are going to work and they hope for the best but what happens is that they don't get it 100% right and a lot of of what goes onto the shelf for sale is not sold ends up in Outlets or sold in discount stores so the idea is to try and understand what do people want and this is actually something that we're working on with our own Factory to understand what the consumer desire is and to produce a smaller number of quantities like a 100 pieces instead of 5,000 pieces and shorten the time frame between figuring out what the consumer wants and your production capability to get the product to Market quicker so you don't deal with the enemy of time and you don't deal with the enemy of uncertainty and you don't deal with the enemy of having produced a huge amount of product a lot of which might not be sold so we think that this is the value of data this is the value of

24:19 understanding consumers better and better such the consumer will tell us what products they want and we will manufacture what they want and it's very exciting for the future we think and very efficient and also very green extraordinary Alibaba recently held its 13th 1111 Global shopping Festival can you tell us about 11-11 and what the significance of this holiday is well the most important thing to tell you is that 11-11 was created by Daniel Jen our chairman and CEO and he created it in 2009 in that year this is really interesting for context we sold a total of $27 million of product actually I think it was less than that I think it was 7 7.8 or 8 million of product and we had 27 brands that participated this last November just passed the gmv was about $84 billion US and 290,000 Brands participated not 290,000 International Brands 290,000 brands in total so some people say oh 11-11 it's all all about

25:28 the sales 11-11 is not about sales of course there is a sales component to it but most of the brands that are participating are much more interested in what they can learn about new product introductions so they use it as a testing opportunity for new ideas because they have hundreds of millions of people focused on the event or they use it to explore new ways to engage with a consumer so you hear a lot about live streaming that's something we started 5 years ago it's become very popular and is probably the most important digital consumer engagement tool today we also think that that will change going forward so short form videos other types of digital engagement are also very popular with consumers Brands yes they see it as a promotional event but as a chance to extend their engagement with consumers and try new things consumers it's a great opportunity to buy things but it's also a super opportunity to explore new

26:29 possibilities I give you one example of this because we're both very proud of it but we thought it was very Innovative during 11-11 we launched what we call the one shoe program designed to cater exclusively to the disabled population people that probably lost a leg amputated or otherwise and only needed one shoe now the traditional approach to disabled people is well they can buy to and just keep the extra shoe but what we did is we went and designed shoes just one shoe shoe a left shoe or a right shoe and you may say well that's pretty simple you just throw the other one away no no it's all about how you change the supply chain and the manufacturing to actually produce the product so that it can be part of a business and so you can actually serve the constituent but also do it on a sustainable and a continuing basis as opposed to just a oneoff this program was hugely popular one of our teams came

27:26 up with the idea and of course it's serving a narrow segment of our consumer population but it's the type of thing that we do in 11-11 interesting you mentioned live streaming what are you doing in live streaming and video well we lead in that live streaming is the single most important digital engagement tool for Brands it was initially built around K's very famous people and it still is very popular to get the most important K's to support products but live streaming has gone Way Beyond K's Brands now use their own Personnel to perform live streaming services because somebody who's working in an offline store is just as capable maybe not as well known but it's just as capable of talking about the product and generating excitement or explaining a new product or a new design that's come out as a k and I think that live streaming will continue to be very important the question is what comes

28:28 after live streaming because five years ago there was no live streaming until we introduced it and it became very popular but we of course are always thinking about what will the next thing be what is a kol a key opinion leader in the US Parliament she would think about this as the Kardashians or others who have millions of followers and in China you have a large group of kol's who appeal to different segments of the 950 million people on our platform looking ahead Michael what shifts do you see in consumer behavior and changes in retail I think the big shift that we've seen is what we've been talking about which is consumers want a very engaging and immersive experience it isn't about just going on a platform and buying a product they do that but if they can do it in a way that's more engaging and more imersive and fun then they will do it and they would prefer to do it that way Brands like it because good engagement

29:28 probably means a repeat customer and a repeat sale and an opportunity to grow that relationship so you have very good alignment between what the brand wants and what the consumer wants I want to be clear that it's not just live streaming there are short form videos you may remember several years ago the gamification was the rage so make it Fun by building a game around whatever the product is that you're selling very popular for a period of time and still quite popular so there are many C Now by now magic mirrors virtual trons all of these things that allow a consumer to do more than just look at a picture or a 3D image to imagine themselves or to be able to recreate themselves in a new jacket or a new dress or with a certain type of lipstick that's the kind of engaging experience that people find fun but also useful so they don't have to wait to have bought the product they virtually look and see what they would

30:31 look like with the product they were intriguing ideas that have now become realities on our platform and on some other platforms and that's what holds people's interests and brings them back I think the other thing that's going on is what I would call category expansion sounds a little boring but things that and the pandemic was helpful in this respect but things that people said would never sell online now they all sell online luxury car s expensive jewelry houses Furniture you know people would say no we don't want to buy why would anybody buy a couch online the answer is because you can tap in the dimensions of a room and know whether it will fit and you may know the color scheme in the room already so not only will you get the color right but you'll also get the design and positioning of it this can all be done digitally there's no requirement to take those measurements to and off l store you can

31:28 still do that the things that were viewed as being quite difficult are now quite easy that's is the process of digitizing everything makes it easy for people to do business and that's really because of alibaba's innovation in digitizing and in verifying the luxury and expensive Goods so people have trust purchasing them on your platform well there are two different things there one is technology and digital capability and tools and those types of things that are on our platform the trust and verification is a very important issue and the platform rules for things like t-all and our luxury Pavilion is there can be no fakes there can be no fake products the authenticity of what is being represented is guaranteed and the brands care about this of course but the consumers care too and so it's our responsibility as a platform to ensure that people are buying authentic products Michael before I ask for the three

32:30 takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with is there anything else you'd like to mention that you haven't already discussed or what should I have asked you that I didn't you didn't ask me anything about competition and normally I don't like talking about the competition but I would address it in a slightly different context which is as somebody who came from the west and who spent 25 almost 30 years thinking about working in China and now working for Alibaba one of the things I hear all the time from people all over the world outside China is that there really isn't any competition in China alibaba's like a monopoly and I think that I can assure your listeners and people who are watching this podcast that there is tons of competition in China the competition just in the core Commerce business is brutal it's interesting the way that people have become competitive is by using technology and consumer engagement

33:31 social live streaming Innovative engagement techniques with consumers to basically get into the Commerce business I think it's a fascinating thing to watch it's competitive it's tough we have to fight we learn a lot from our competitors but I think there's an illusion out there that somehow there is no competition in China and you also hear it from politicians of course it's a brutally competitive market Michael what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today the first takeaway would be the need to stay agile stay adaptive and to see Innovation as a Continuum that never stops that's what I'm living every day working for Alibaba it's not static it's completely Dynamic second would be to the importance of leveraging the power of d data and digital Technologies both today and as they continue to rapidly develop live streaming is a good example of something that's here today but there

34:37 going to be many many different digital tools and capabilities in the future and you have to stay current and you have to continue to leverage those because everything's going to be digitized in the future and the third is probably the most obvious but it's I think it's the most important which is focus on the customer and know their pain point and solve those pain points because if you don't you're competitors will Michael thank you this has been terrific thank you then great to talk to you if you enjoy today's episode and would like to receive the show notes or get new Fresh weekly episodes be sure to sign up for our newsletter at 3 takeaways thatcombines

35:27 at 3 takeaway.com

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "#82 Growing Alibaba into the World's Largest Online Commerce Company with President Michael Evans"?

Lynn Tomman (Host), Michael Evans (Guest).

What is "#82 Growing Alibaba into the World's Largest Online Commerce Company with President Michael Evans" about?

Michael Evans, president of Alibaba, shares insights into the company's extraordinary growth into the world's largest online commerce platform, surpassing even Amazon. He recounts his unconventional career journey from banking to Alibaba, highlighting his long-standing relationship with founder Jack Ma and the unique innovations Alibaba has introduced across various sectors including fintech and…

What is mentioned in this 3 Takeaways episode?

8 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Michael Evans, 11-11, AliExpress, Jack Ma, Lazada, Daraz. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "#82 Growing Alibaba into the World's Largest Online Commerce Company with President Michael Evans"?

The episode runs 36 min; the transcript is about 5,744 words in 36 timestamped sections.

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