Jack Ma

Ma Yu, better known as Jack Ma, is a Chinese business entrepreneur who was born and raised in the country. On the tenth of September 1964, Jack Ma was born. He is married to Zhang Ying and they have one child, Ma Yuankun (Fannin, R. 2015). According to Forbes, Jack Ma’s net worth is roughly $38.7 billion. The paper focuses on Jack Ma’s early life, career, and the discoveries he made or has made over his career.

Failure, rejection, fighting, resolve, vision, and agility defined Jack Ma’s early life, according to Shiying, L., and Avery, M. (2009). At a tender age, Jack Ma’s parents were persecuted courtesy of the hot political temperatures between the then ruling Communist party and the Nationalists party for which they supported. Jack Ma developed a passion for the English language and tried his level best to communicate better in the language.

He got training from foreigners in a hotel, the Hangzhou International Hotel, which was about seventy minute-bicycle ride from his residence. He persevered to learn English and kept the close ties with his friends for about nine years. This would later turn out to be his career-defining language. Jack Ma resolved to study at the Chinese University. Back then, the entry exam used to be done only once in a year, and Jack Ma tried and failed four times. He then decided to join the Hangzhou Training Institute to pursue Bachelor’s degree in English where he graduated in the year 1988.

Career

Jack Ma’s career started back in 1990’s when he developed the interest of making money through the internet. In 1995, he visited United States of America, on many occasions, to try and come up with a way of making Websites for himself. His interest grew even bigger when he learned that he could make money out of the venture. As a result, Jack Ma weighed into an idea many imagined was too raw. He came up with his farm in the same year.

The firm’s main business was making websites for clients. Only three years later, that is 1998; Jack Ma had made a whopping $800,000 despite the fact that he had injected only $20,000 into the business. In that same year of 1988, Jack Ma caught the attention of government agencies dealing with Information Technology and even saw himself rise to the ranks of a head of Information Technology in a reputable agency, the China International Electronic Commerce Centre. Jack Ma only worked for the IT-based firm for one year. In 1999, Ma resigned and began a new venture.

Having developed the necessary skills necessary for Information Technology website building, Ma began focusing on a business that could enable his customers or clients have a one-step shop website. This was when he came up with the firm globally known as Alibaba.

In the year 2000, Jack Ma had made many investors interested in his entrepreneurial skills, and they pumped in$25 million into his Alibaba firm. With this amount of money injected as Equity, Jack Ma realized he had the opportunity to restructure his firm and expand it. He began by opening several braches within China to see how he could operate the business. He then came up with the idea of a Multi International Company weighing the merits and demerits. Jack Ma then opted to go global and had Alibaba expanded to about two hundred and forty nations across the world.

Discoveries of Jack Ma

The Jack Ma’s discoveries can be divided into two. One is the entrepreneurial discoveries while the second is the technological discoveries.

Entrepreneurial discoveries

Jack Ma is undoubtedly one of the greatest Entrepreneurs in the world.

One, Jack Ma learned to be like the Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump is Ma’s favorite film because there is a lot of disappointment in it. Just like in the film, Jack Ma discovered that entrepreneurs are not quitters even when the struggle becomes difficult. Jack Ma had two specific instances when he almost gave up. He found it exceedingly cumbersome to juggle teaching with business being that he could only make $15 a month. Besides, KFC hotel kept turning Jack Ma away whenever he looked for jobs at the hotel. Nevertheless, Jack Ma made up his mind that successful entrepreneurs do not let setbacks get them down. In fact, the successful entrepreneurs are open to the possibilities and impossibilities of situations but only focus on the given situations from the angle of possibilities (Carland, H., Carland, J. W., Hoy, F., & Carland, J. A. C. 2002).

Two, Jack Ma discovered the difference between innovation and invention and used that to his advantage. The discovery is called, ‘building on the shoulders of giants.’ Before Jack Ma came up with e-commerce business, there were other successful firms in the industry such as the eBay. What Jack Ma did was to come up with a completely different product within the industry. It is this discovery that led to a real-time chat function found on Taobao(Jung, J. C., Ugboma, M. A., & Liow, A. K. 2015). Jack Ma came up with this real-time chat function specifically to fit the China’s market and ended up boosting the trust between transacting parties. With the high level of trust, it became much easier for Ma to make profits without unnecessary overhead costs.

Three, Jack Ma discovered the power of branding in Entrepreneurship. Having noted that most people often abandon their traits and adopt strict business-like characters, Ma decided to do directly opposite. He built a culture of participation, fun, and inclusion in his business. Ma would wear outlandish outfits when addressing managers and throw parties meant to make his employees have fun and relax. Consequently, Ma went ahead to build a massive intrinsically- motivated group of employees and that has greatly contributed to his success (Jung, J. C., Ugboma, M. A., & Liow, A. K. 2015).

Finally, Jack Ma discovered the importance of soaring with eagles. He made friends with the best brains he could find to help him in accomplishing his goals. As a business founder, Jack Ma did not and did not believe that he is perfect and therefore he lets experts handle various aspects of his business. Ma also made friendship with the likes of Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s co-founder and Son, Softbank’s chairman. He did all this to gain business-related and management knowhow.

Discoveries in technology

Jack Ma integrated many systems in his IT-based firms and e-commerce businesses.

One, JACK Ma used the Transaction Processing System (TPS) to gather data about everyday business events in real time as they occur. One of such systems was the real-time chat used in the Taobao e-commerce where clients can transact and agree in real time. Ma also used the scanners and barcodes to come up with a website offering quick, cheap and reliable transaction (Baltzan, P., & Phillips, A. 2008).

Two, Jack Ma used an Inter-Organizational System (IOS) to come up with an e-commerce business able to link two organizations such as Alibaba and Alimama.

Three, Ma used Management information System ( MIS) to help in the provision of management oriented reporting across the three levels of management that is, the strategic level, the managerial level, and the operational level. Four, Ma used the Decision Support Systems (DSS) which is an application that provides the users with decision oriented information in a case where unstructured decision-making situation arises.

Finally, Jack Ma used the Expert Systems( ES) to ensure that expert ideas were captured and remained in the business organizations for future use.

The discovery of Jack Ma in as far as technology is concerned can be summarized as below.

Strategic Top managers

Systems

Staff Support Knowledge workers professionals

Managerial Systems Middle managers

Operational Systems Line Managers

Office Automation and Communication Systems Clerical staff

Summary

According to Xu, J., & Quaddus, M. (2013), the use of technology systems in Jack Ma’s Alibaba and other e-commerce business firms influenced the business in many ways. These ways include, the systems helped in setting clear objectives to ensure that the system focuses on the major issues of the business, an appropriate information processing technology required to meet the data processing and analysis needs of the users of the MIS is selected, making the business more reliable and efficient, making sure that all the levels of management are guided by technology to minimize the chances of errors occurring in the business and allowing the business to have speedy and accurate transactions. The technology systems used in collecting data at the business include Transaction Processing System (TPS), the Expert Systems ( ES), the Management Information System (MIS), the Inter organizational systems (IOS) and the Decision Support System (DSS).

Conclusion

Jack Ma is credited for pumping a new culture in the world of entrepreneurship and coming up with new strategies to ensure the success of business. From his early life an education, Jack Ma was more often than not faced with failure and frustration. On the contrary, Ma learned positive lessons from his frustrations such as the spirit of persistence. He then went ahead to innovate the already invented industry of Technology. Jack Ma then came up with unique products such as the real-time chat used for real-time transactions in the e-commerce business firm of Taobao He discovered both the entrepreneurial skills and technology skills which helped him put a team together and develop multi-national corporations of Alibaba.

References

Baltzan, P., & Phillips, A. (2008). Business-driven information systems. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Carland, H., Carland, J. W., Hoy, F., & Carland, J. A. C. (2002). Who is an entrepreneur? Is a question worth asking. Entrepreneurship: Critical perspectives on business and management, 2(178), 47- 67.

Fannin, R. (2015). How i did it: Jack Ma, Alibaba. com.

Jung, J. C., Ugboma, M. A., & Liow, A. K. (2015). Does Alibaba’s Magic Work Outside China?. Thunderbird International Business Review, 57(6), 505-518.

Shiying, L., & Avery, M. (2009). Alibaba: the inside story behind Jack Ma and the creation of the world’s biggest online marketplace. Harper Collins.

Xu, J., & Quaddus, M. (2013). Managing information systems: Ten essential topics. Springer Science & Business Media.