1.0
INTRODUCTION
According to Kuratko D.
(1995), entrepreneurship is a process of innovation and new-venture creation
through four major dimensions, which are individual, organization, environment
and process. These dimensions are aided by collaborative networks in
government, education, and institutions. Kuratko also defines entrepreneur as a
catalyst for economic change who uses purposeful searching, careful planning
and sound judgment in carrying out the entrepreneurial process (Kuratko, 1995) .
2.0 TASK 1: A. ENTREPRENEURIAL
TRAITS
There are some entrepreneurial
traits that highly needed and applied to operate the business by the
entrepreneurs which are shown below.
2.1 NETWORKED
The vocabulary “network” has a few meanings. In the context of business,
network or networking is creating a group of acquaintances and associates and
keeping it active through regular communication for mutual benefit (BusinessDictionary,
n.d.) .
Adam Small, the founder of Strategic Business Network states that networking is
the single most powerful marketing tactic to accelerate and sustain success for
any individual or organization (Small, 2011) . He also says that networking
is about making connections as well as building enduring and mutually
beneficial relationships. Networking provides the most productive, most
proficient and most enduring tactic to build relationships, which are the
catalyst for success because people do business with those they like and trust.
Wickham also stated that a business organisation does not exist in isolation.
It will be in contact with a whole range of other organisations. Some of these
relationships will be established through the market but others may have a
longer term, contractual nature (Wickham, 2004) .
In
other words, networking can be called as social capital. The definition of
social capital by Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is networks
together with shared norms, values and understandings that facilitate
cooperation within or among groups (OECD, 2001) . There are four broad approaches to the
concept of networking. First and foremost, in term of anthropological
definition, networking is the source for the notion that humans have natural
instincts for association. In term of sociological definition, networking
describes social norms and the sources of human motivation. Besides, in term of
economic definition, networking draws on the assumption that people will
maximise their personal utility in deciding to interact with people and draw on
social capital resources to conduct various types of group activities which
focus on the investment strategies of individuals faced with alternative uses
of time. The forth concept which is in term of political science emphasises the
role of institutions, political and social norms in shaping human behaviour.
Jack
Ma, the co-founder of Alibaba Group is the best example of networked
entrepreneur. Jack Ma’s interpersonal skills are so strong that he can easily
access and fully organize the resources from his social network to fill the
shortage of equity capital. Eventually, he got control of Alibaba (Kong, 2014) . Jack Ma is a
charismatic leader and is highly socially active to enlarge the circle of his
social relationships. He started Alibaba from scratch in 1999 with the other 17
co-founders. He is the leader of the team. His team members trust and follow
him because of his creativity and innovation, his leadership and commitment
towards the team. All the staffs in Alibaba are the internal network that Jack
Ma has built. Within this network, Jack Ma also personally chooses and trains
management teams. The special corporate culture that Alibaba applies, including
values, common mission, systems and norms has made everyone in Alibaba bonded
together. Not only this, Jack Ma also has been enlarging his external network
and relationships with people come from different social classes. After many
years of his investment in building his network, Jack Ma has accumulated a wide
range of social resources through his social network which is helpful for his
business. He is currently ranked at 33th of The World’s Billionaires
(Forbes, 2015)
2.2 OPEN
RISK TAKER
According
to Kuratko D., there are four types of risk an entrepreneur will face, which
are financial risk, career risk, family and social risk and psychic risk.
Financial risk is the most common risk. In most new ventures, entrepreneur puts
a significant of his or her savings or other resources at stake. This money or
these resources will, in all likelihood, be lost if the venture fails. Career
risk is like a question frequently been asked to would-be entrepreneurs whether
they will be able to find a job or go back to their old job if their venture
should fail. Family and social mostly faced by new entrepreneurs because
starting a new venture uses much of the energy and time of the entrepreneurs.
Consequently, their other commitments may suffer and is exposed to the risks of
an incomplete family experience and the possibility of permanent emotional
scars. Last but not least, psychic risk is the greater risk may be to the
well-being of the entrepreneur. Some entrepreneurs who have suffered financial
catastrophes have been unable to bounce back, at least not immediately and the
psychological impact has proven to be too severe (Kuratko, 1995) .
Elon
Musk, who is a South African entrepreneur, is one of the most famous open risk
takers in the world of entrepreneurs. He is well-known for founding Tesla
Motors, SpaceX and Solar City, which launched a landmark commercial spacecraft
in 2012 (Biography.com Editors, n.d.) . Elon Musk is
currently ranked at 100th of The World’s Billionaires (Forbes, 2015) . Before Elon Musk
becomes a billionaire, he risked almost all his money to invest in his three
companies, which he invested $100m in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla and $10m in Solar
City while his proceeds from Paypal were $180m and he had to borrow money for
rent (The Economist, 2015) . In this case, Elon
Musk is taking the financial risk and psychic risk. However, according to
Kuratko D., successful entrepreneurs believe in themselves. They believe that
their accomplishments and setbacks are within their own control and influence
and that they can affect the outcome of their actions. Successful entrepreneurs
are not gamblers (Kuratko, 1995) . Elon Musk is taking
the calculated risk and he believes that his accomplishment and setbacks are
within his own control. Besides, on the fourth annual International Space
Station (ISS) Research and Development Conference, which takes place in Boston
on 7-9 July 2015, Elon Musk shared his philosophy on taking risks and how
significant outcomes can come from big risks. He said:” I don't really like
risk for risk's sake or anything. And I do think that a lot of things are very
risky with a low chance of success. But if you wanna try to come up with an
innovative breakthrough, that's gonna be how it is. Anything which is
significantly innovative is gonna come with a significant risk of failure. But
you gotta take big chances in order for the potential for big, positive
outcome. And if the outcome is exciting enough then taking a big risk is worthwhile.”
(CASIS, 2015)
Another significant open risk taker is
Li Ka-shing, who came from a poor family and then become a successful
entrepreneur who is currently ranked at 17th of The World’s
Billionaires (Forbes, 2015) . The investments in
the Hong Kong property market illustrated a large discern risk because of the
political issue between Hong Kong and China. However, Li Ka-Shing took the risk
by purchasing investments when the overall Hong Kong economy was in despair. By
doing so, he earned the first bucket of gold to start his first company, mainly
involved in property development. In a small conclusion, the profit received
from taking the risk is absolutely the countless times compared to those who
lack of courageous to bear the risk (Yule, 2015) .
2.3 OBSERVANT
According to Collins English Dictionary Tenth
Edition (2010), observant is defined as paying close attention to details and
quick to notice things happen around. It means an observant person is able to
detect or spot things, laws and people around him or her. Referring James
Strock (2015), an observant entrepreneur is able to look for the next ideas.
Entrepreneurs are not only alert to things that happen around them but also
things around the world. They are always smart in recognizing great
opportunities before others do.
The observant trait can be shown by
one of the most well-known Malaysian entrepreneur named Dato Steven Sim. He is
a very successful entrepreneur who has established Secret Recipe cafe with his
nephews in the year 1997. After years of hardship, he managed and has created
one of the most outstanding Malaysian Brands.
Referring to the repost published by
Utusan Online (2011), Steven Sim found that there was a gap in the food and
beverage industry (F&B) back in 18 years ago. He found that fine dining
services only available in the restaurants in hotels while the other
restaurants out there were not up to standard which customers had to dine in an
unpleasant. He felt that there was a need to create something new in between
the gap, which can provides good dining experiences with affordable price. He
calls the idea as “casual dining”. He quitted his job as a marketing director
at a multinational company and started his first premise Secret Recipe in SS2
Petaling Jaya with his three nephews who are trained-bakers (Chua Ai Dee, 2014).
Today, Secret Recipe has more than 300 outlets in Malaysia, South-East Asia,
China and Australia and is recognized as an international lifestyle cafe (Karina
Foo, 2012).
Steven Sim is an observant
entrepreneur who grabs the potential opportunity to start a unique style of cafe
business when he found the need of innovative in the food and beverage
industry. He does survey time to time, to study the cultures, lifestyles and
eating habits of consumers in Malaysia as well as other countries before he set
his target market. After long observation of the market, he targets all ages of
consumers for his products. Furthermore, the franchisee license of the Secret
Recipe is only given to he or she who meets the criteria under his observation.
These are the reasons why Steven Sim can be a very successful entrepreneur and
franchisor today.
2.4 VISIONARY
According to Oxford Advanced
Learner’s Dictionary 8th Edition (2010), visionary is defined as
thinking or planning about the future with imagination or wisdom. Visionary
entrepreneurs are people who run their business with a particular vision to
help them to achieve their business goal. Normally, visionary entrepreneurs will
have a positive mind-set as in they want to use their products to change the
world. Two most significant examples of visionary entrepreneurs are Bill Gates
and Steve Jobs.
Bill Gates is definitely a very good example of visionary
entrepreneur. He is the founder of the world’s largest software business,
Microsoft. He is also well-known as the richest person of the world which he is ranked at the top of The World’s
Billionaires (Forbes, 2015) . Over
30 years ago, Bill Gates and his partner Paul Allen started to dream big about
software, and also the impact of the dream could have. Bill Gates had spent a
lot of his time in the computer lab to work on software program in spite of his
parent wanted him to finish his study and become a lawyer in the future. Bill
Gates had a vision about “getting a computer on every desk and every home” (Beaumont, 2008) .
After
Microsoft had become a major computer software company in the world, Bill Gates
stepped down as the chairman of Microsoft, but he never stop to contribute to
the world. He focused more improving humanity’s by spreading his wealth through
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It was launched by Bill Gates in year
2000 with objectives to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty, to
expand educational opportunities and access to information technology in
America. With him and his vision, the world of technology has changed and getting
advanced (Edge, n.d.) .
Steve Jobs was another significant visionary entrepreneur
of the world. He was the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Apple Computer Inc.,
who passed away in the year 2011. He is a visionary entrepreneur. He has
visions to turn the powerful technology into tools which is user friendly,
tools that would help people to achieve their dreams and help to change the
world to a better world where everyone is having a quality life. For example,
Apple’s products, Mac and iOS are able to help the blinds to get information
they need via audio tutorials. Nowadays, many organisations start to provide
their employees with Apple’s products like iPhone and iPad, because they
believe that Apple devices are user friendly and providing a better security
than Google Android. Thus, the employees can perform their jobs with ease with
the help of these products as well as not worrying about the leakage of the important
information of the organisations to the outsiders.
Steve Jobs had turned Apple from a drifted and forgotten
company into one of the most successful and well-known companies in the world. It
is currently ranked at the first place on World’s Most Valuable Brands on
Forbes Lists (Forbes, 2015) . However, in October 2011, Steve Jobs
(56 years old) passed away due to pancreatic cancer, but his spirit and vision of
changing the world for the better is still carry on by others (Palmer, 2015) .
One of his famous and memorable quotes is “people with passion can change the
word.” (Gallo, 2015) .
2.5 FAILURE IS AN OPTION
Cambridge
Academic Content Dictionary defines failure as lack of success. In business
world, there are hurdles and obstacles that must be overcome. The entrepreneur
must be consistently persistent. Many successful entrepreneurs succeeded only
after they had failed several times (Lambing & Kuehl, 2003) . Failure is always
an option is a phrase popularized by Adam Savage from MythBusters (Singer, 2010) . A successful
entrepreneur has tenacity despite failure. The only real cost of failure in
modern business is wasting time worrying about it.
One of the most famous entrepreneurs
who see failure as an option is Henry Ford. Henry Ford is the founder of Ford
Motor Company. He is well-known as a business magnate, philanthropist and
social entrepreneur, actually failed several times. First, he lost all the
money from his first group of investors without producing a car. When he
eventually produced a car and raised another $60,000 in share capital, his
Detroit Auto Company went bankrupt. In the 1920s, the sales fall dramatically
because he refused to update one of the models of the automobile (Consultant Journal, n.d.) . However, Henry Ford
did not give up and he stood up again after learning the lessons from his
failures. He reincorporated Ford Motor Company and focused squarely on
mass-producing vehicles which are affordable and desired by customers and
became a successful entrepreneur. One of his famous quotes is “Failure is
simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently” (Canty, 2011)
Besides, Colonel Harland David
Sanders, the founder of fast food chicken restaurant chain Kentucky Fried
Chicken (KFC) had been facing hardships and failures before he ever achieved
any entrepreneurial success at the age of 65. He came from a broken family. He
dropped out from school and started to work. He spent the first half of his
life working a series of jobs such as selling insurance, selling tires, making
lighting systems, operating a ferry boat and so on. Few years later, he
discovered a new recipe for his chicken and the sales was very good. When he finally
established a restaurant by putting all his capital, unfortunately, due to the
construction of a new road by the government, he was forced to auction his
restaurant at very low price which only enough to cover his debts. He was
totally broke and had to live in his car for two years. During the two years,
he travelled houses to all over the area to look for someone to buy his chicken
recipe. His fried chicken recipe was rejected 1009 times before a restaurant
accepted once. With his dedication, at last, he succeeded and became a very
well-known entrepreneur and his restaurant, KFC is one of the largest fast food
restaurants that has franchises all over the world (Ashley, 2012) .
2.6 OPEN CULTURE
According
to Aycan et. al. (2000) and Schein (1990), organizational culture is a
combination of beliefs, values, and assumptions shaping management styles and
processes in the organizational. Open culture in the companies can be defined
as companies which apply horizontal hierarchy rather than applying the
traditional organizational hierarchy. It allows an open dialogue between upper
management and employees. In the horizontal hierarchy, leaders or entrepreneurs
as mentors for employees are flexible and open-minded. They always allow them
to develop their ideas when making an important decision. Employees are not
being dismissed when their ideas are not used because leaders will provide
feedback to them. Open corporate culture encourages the open collaboration
between all roles and levels without boundaries. Leaders will not control their
followers and ask their followers to do whatever things they order them.
Freedom is given to their employees. Companies that provide intranet for
employees to share and upload documents, and provide open seating where
cubicles have no walls or doors are some of the examples of open cultures any
company can to improve the creativeness and efficiency of employees in problem
solving and prevents conflict occurs in the communication.
By linking Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, a
successful internet entrepreneur and computer programmer, also known as
chairman and chief executive of Facebook, Inc. Mark Zuckerberg applied open
culture in the management of organization and set it as the mission of company.
According to “The Boy Billionaire: Mark Zuckerberg In His Own Words”, 2012
edited by Beahm, Facebook company is a very open culture company. Mark
Zuckerberg has an open communication with his employees by doing Q&A
section. Employees are allowed to list down any ideas in this section so that
Mark Zuckerberg will notice their ideas. Mark Zuckerberg treats his employees
well by giving free food, free dry cleaning, as well as a lot of other enticing
benefits. Facebook is a non-traditional, strength based to hiring the best
talent or right skills but recruiting for the right attitude. The company
encourages its workers to form teams around projects they are passionate about,
provides opportunities to career growth based on smart and competence instead of
credentials. The contributions to the improvement of the products by its
workers are recognized and respected.
2.7 OUTCOME
ORIENTED
According
to “Managing Performance through Training and Development, Fifth Edition”, 2010
by Saks and Haccoun, performance goals are outcome-oriented goal that focus
attention on the achievement of specific performance outcome. It means that
outcome-oriented is also known as goal oriented. The Cambridge Business English
Dictionary defines goal oriented as “a person or team works hard to achieve
good result in the task that they have been given”. What is a goal? The Oxford
English Dictionary defines a goal as “the object of a person’s ambition or
effort…a destination…an aim”. The simplicity of this message is everyone must
have an aim, a destination that one is trying to arrive at certain target. Outcome-orientation is one of the most
important skills in entrepreneurship as a strategy for entrepreneurs to plan
for the future projects and ways to approach the revenues in the business. The
considering of the customers, company and society is also a part of the outcome
orientation skill for successful entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs focus on goals
and do everything without giving up although it does not seem likely to
succeed. They will work stubbornly until they achieved their goals.
Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, CEO of AirAsia
Group is one of the successful Malaysian entrepreneurs. When he was a 6 years old
child, he dreamt to run an airline, own an English football club and owning a Formula
One racing team. In September 2001, when the former Malaysian Prime Minister
Dr. Mahathir Mohamad heard of Fernandes’s dream of running an airline, he then
advised Tony to buy the government owned AirAisa which the company was
heavily-in-debt. Then, Tony got his personal savings and mortgaged his house to
buy this firm for one Ringgit (about 26 US cents) with two old jets and US$11
million worth of debt. Fernandes introduced the first budget no-frills airline
to Malaysia with the slogan “Now everyone can fly”. He reformed the airline as
a short-haul low cost carrier that was similar to those operating in the West.
The desire of nothing is impossible to achieve, determination of Tony enable
him to turned around a negative profit and small airline company with only two
airplanes to one that now has 160-strong fleet of aircrafts in only 12 years.
According to the Skytrax World’s Airline Awards, AirAsia has been named the
“World’s Best Low Cost Airline” for five consecutive years from 2009 to 2013.
Fernandes has built the publicly listed AirAsia Group into Asia’s low cost
airline with over 100 destinations.
2.8 TEAM
ORIENTED
According to “Making the
Team: A Guide for Managers”, 2004 by Leigh L. Thompson, Sundstrom, DeMeuse, and
Futrell (1990) a work team is an interdependent collection of individuals who
share the responsibility on the specific outcomes for their organization. A
team is a group of people who are interdependent with respect to information
resources, skills and who seek to combine their efforts in order to achieve a
common goal. In “Success through Teamwork”, by Richard Y.Chang (1995), team is
people who work together in a group. It is including the effective
communication, active listening, successfully resolving the conflicts that
inevitably arise when people work in groups, understanding and adapting to the
diverse backgrounds of other team members, and maintaining a sense of
motivation among all team members. From “Manager’s Official Guide to Team
Working”, by Jerry Spiegel Cresencio Torres (1995), a work team is a group of
individual who have the same work objectives and whose work in mutually
dependent. The team members are joined in a coordinated effort, much like a
team members in a contest or competition.
Lary Page and Sergey
Brin who are the founders of Google are the best example of team oriented
entrepreneurs. In 1996, Larry and Sergey started to cooperate with each other
in introducing and developing the new search engine called BackRub. BackRub ran
in Stanford server for a year. However it ended up with the server overwhelmed
due to the excessive bandwidth. Google.com was registered on September 15th,
the name is derived from the mathematical term “googol”, which is represented
after numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. Team oriented trait can be shown by
Larry and Sergey. They set the targets together and achieve the targets by
working as a team. For instance, their objective is to make Google to become a
worldwide search engine. Both of them utilize their own strength as the
president of product and president of technology respectively in their team
work in order to achieve the objectives of Google. Referring to He (2013),
Google company has a weekly meeting where all the leaders and founders will be gathered
and get updated with the company’s operations. This meeting is a great chance
for all the employees to enquire the related issues and propose their ideas
directly to company’s top leader. The purpose of the meeting is Larry and
Sergey want their employees to work hand in hand as a team to reduce the gaps
between leaders and employees.
Team-oriented is also well annotated by the founder of
Federal Express - Frederick W. Smith. As a leader, Smith always tries his best
to help his employees even during his hardship time. For example, Smith will
make sure his employees can get the best medical care although his company was
facing the problem in cash flow. The principle that used by Smith in FedEx is
to encourage his employees to share the successful of FedEx together and
involve themselves as part of the company. With this, Smith and his employees
are able to work as a team to develop FedEx. This has been proven by the
situation that when FedEx received 800,000 extra packages a day, all the
employees willing to work overnight with Smith though some of them had worked
for the whole day during the United Parcel Service Strike in 1990s (Academy of Achievement, 2014).
Moreover, he also much
appreciated his employees who work for 10 years in his FedEx by inviting his
employees to have a breakfast with him. According to Alan Murray (2012), Smith
also provided the tools for him employees in order to make sure his employees
to do their work right. A meeting is conducted frequently to make sure their
employees understand their job scopes as well and to improve and tighten the
team relationship among leaders and employees from the meeting.
2.9 PROACTIVE
According
to The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, 1989 by Stephen R. Covey,
proactive is defined as more than merely taking initiatives. It means that as
human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behaviour is a function
of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We
have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen. Highly
proactive people recognize that responsibility. Their behaviour is a product of
their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their
conditions, based on feeling.
Robert
Kuok Hock Nien, Malaysian richest man which ranked at 110th of The
World’s Billionaires on Forbes is one of the best examples of proactive
entrepreneur (Forbes, 2015) . He is proactive to
learn about the sugar industry and business knowledge that he had made a trip
to United Kingdom to do market research towards the sugar industry. In London,
he made a depth investigation about sugar industry and the sugar trade
situation until he has mastered it. He is also very hardworking and determined
on learning English. This is because he found that English is very important to
deal with the businessmen especially from foreign countries and to beat all the
other competitors. After he backed to Malaysia, he focused on his career and
founded Malaysia first sugar refinery. His business has been successful and
after a long time, he controlled 80% of Malaysia’s sugar industry with 1.5
million tonnes’ worth of sugar production. This led to him being dubbed the “Sugar
King of Asia”. (Low, 2015)
3.0 TASK 1: B. ENTREPRENEURIAL
TRAITS
According Liu (2008)
in the Ma Yun Zhuan, Jack Ma was born at 10 September 1964 in Hangzhou,
Zhejiang Province, China is one of the successful entrepreneur in the world. He
is the founder and chairman of Alibaba Group which is a Chinese e-commerce
company that provides sales services via web portals to connect Chinese
manufacturers with overseas buyers. Among the Chinese entrepreneurs, he is the one
who made it to the Forbes list in recent years. In 1988, he attended Hangzhou
Teacher's Institute and graduated with a bachelor's degree in English. After
that, he became a lecturer in English and International Trade at the Hangzhou
Dianzi University. Now, he is a holder of a master’s degree in English
Literature from Cheung Kong University. Let us talk about how he started his
business, in the year 1995, he started an online business when computers had
not yet become a household item in China. Despite being deemed risky, his
determination was really unaffected. He discovered the opportunity of
e-commerce and started an Internet company, named China Yellow Pages. However,
the China Yellow Page was not very successful, he joined commerce ministry for
a period. After three years, he headed an information technology company
established by the China International Electronic Commerce Centre. In the year
1999, he decided to quit and then founded Alibaba website and develop the
network market. After so many years, Alibaba is the biggest e-commerce websites
in the world. “Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the
day after tomorrow will be sunshine” is one of his famous quotes. Because of
his dedication and his success, he was often invited to deliver speeches at
famous universities such as the Wharton School of Finance at the University of
Pennsylvania, Peking University and Harvard University.
Jack
Ma is a visionary entrepreneur. He has fulfilled the characteristic of
visionary because he always thinking that how he can make Alibaba to become a
global platform for small business around the world. He strongly believes that
internet can help small business sell thing across the oceans. In the early of
1995, Jack Ma was introduced to the internet in Harvard University, he realized
that internet is a very good tool to do business. Alibaba indeed has changed
the business world in China. It has created a lot of entrepreneur opportunities
to the Chinese. Anyone also can trade by using Alibaba. Entrepreneurs do not
necessary need a shop to sell their things and they do not need a very big
capital to start up their business too. Alibaba has created a lot of
entrepreneurs in China and this has contributed to the changes and growth of
economy in China. Besides, Jack Ma also has some principles when he managing
his company. He prefers to hire people with superior skills. He said that,
focusing on the skills of employees and hiring people who know how to carry out
your vision is an important pillar of any great company. Jack Ma unites his
company under a common goal, rather than uniting company under the vision of
one person. He strongly believes that vision is more important than the leader.
No
doubt, failure is an option to Jack Ma. Jack Ma did not perform excel in his
academy in his early ages. He has been failing in the examinations when he was
a student. He failed twice in his Primary School examinations and failed thrice
in his Middle School examinations. He also failed the entrance examinations for
thrice when applying to universities. After few times of trial, he joined
Hangzhou Normal University with Bachelor’s degree in English. He had always
wanted to enter Harvard University so he had been applying for the enrolment to
Harvard University for ten times but he was rejected every time. In the World
Economic Forum interview by Charlie Rose, Jack Ma said he was the only one guy
who was rejected by the KFC company and the Police force. Besides, Jack Ma also
faced failure on two of his initial ventures on his entrepreneurial
undertakings. Although Jack Ma was rejected for many times, but he always
believes that a person is able to learn the most from obstacles and hardships.
After Jack Ma persevered and learned from his mistakes, he started to work hard
and focusing on creating websites. He started his Internet company named China
Yellow Pages. Jack Ma continued to persuade his friends to invest and join his new
e-commerce, Alibaba. Few years later, Jack Ma started his first successful
company at the age of 31. We can clearly see the characteristic of “Failure is
an option” from Jack Ma’s business journey. Although he failed many times in
his childhood and also adulthood, but failures never stop him to achieve his
goal. According to Jack Ma, “giving up is the greatest failure”.
Besides, Jack Ma is also an
entrepreneur who practices open culture in his company. Chinese management
style differs from the Western. Jack Ma has a different view on management.
Thus, he builds a corporate culture different from the hierarchical traditional
typical in Chinese firms. According to Porter Erisman, Jack Ma combined the
best of Chinese culture and Silicon Valley spirit to create a unique company
culture. There are usually two co-founders at the west companies, but at
Alibaba, it had 18 co-founders shows group leadership maybe better than the
west. One of the core values of Alibaba is teamwork which company believe that
teamwork enables ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things. Alibaba also
encourage it employees to “work happily, and live seriously” to show their
commitment. The company encourage it workers to have fun at work and feel free
to come and go anytime as long as they finish their work. Jack Ma always
infuses their workers with winning spirit and belief that they can do and be
anything if they are together. A method of flattened the organization
hierarchy, Jack Ma assumes nicknames that are taken from characters of Kung Fu
novels even for the top of the corporate management, they are referred by
nicknames also. Jack Ma participates in mass wedding ceremonies of his
employees that get married throughout each year showed he was open-minded and
unconventionality.
Jack Ma is also a team oriented
entrepreneur. In early, Alibaba team was working and had their meeting in Jack
Ma’s apartment. From the video of Jack Ma Speech from "Crocodile In The
Yangtze" in 1999, Jack Ma is giving a speech to his team member about his
plans to compete with overseas websites. He also mentioned that “If we are a
good team and know what we want to do, one of us can defeat ten of them” to his
team member as a motivation (Daily, 2013) . Jack Ma and his friends
founded Hope Translation Agency in 1994. The rental was exceeded the profits
earned at that time. When his friends decided to give up, he tried to maintain
the business by selling small products at the roadside to cover the rental.
After two years, Hope Translation Agency is the first biggest translation
agency registered in Hangzhou and it is a professional translation agency
registered at Hangzhou Municipal Administration for Industry and Commerce. Jack
Ma worked hard to keep the operation of translation agency because he spotted
the demand of translation in the future market although it was unprofitable at
that time. Jack Ma was the first Chinese internet entrepreneur who developed
internet business in China. He and his team then set up Alibaba as a B2B
marketplace site. Alibaba.com enables Chinese exporters to connect with
overseas buyers. After consolidated the position of Alibaba, Jack Ma plans for
another project which is focus on consumer-to-consumer e-commerce platform
named Taobao which was formed in 2003. The standard of Alibaba started is to
help the world entrepreneurs. Journey of entrepreneurs are full of
difficulties, Alibaba as a platform or tool of opportunity to succeed for small
enterprises to compete with big companies. Jack Ma always considers the ideas
that created by his team members. Jack Ma would even give equity to the student
who working with him. Today, Alibaba has expanded to hire 30000 employees in
his company.
Jack Ma is a very proactive person.
This trait can be seen even during his early ages. He has passion on English.
When he started to learn English during his childhood, he thought that the
curriculum conducted in school is not enough for him to master the language. On
an occasion, he realized Hang Zhou’s West Lake is a place for him to learn and
improve his English as it is a tourist attraction spot so there will be flooded
with foreigners. Thus, he decided to ride on bike for nearly 40 minutes every
day to the hotel near the Hang Zhou’s West Lake, which was quite far from his
house, just to grab the chance to talk to native English speakers. He took
initiative to communicate in English with the foreigners whoever passes by. He
even offered free tour guide to the tourists in order to learn English in
different way. As a result, his English language proficiency had a great
improvement. Moreover, he is also proactive in his business. When he was
introduced to the Internet in Harvard University, he saw a business opportunity
which is doing internet business. He was very proactive to study about the
Internet when he was in Harvard University. When he back to China, he created
an internet company named China Yellow Pages. That time, the Internet was still
not commonly introduced and used in China. Jack Ma gathered some of the companies
through his network and allowed these companies to trade by using his China
Yellow Pages. Even though China Yellow Pages was not very successful, but his
proactive and never give up spirits have lead him to the way of success.
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