Jack Ma steps down next week as chairman of Alibaba, but the start-up he built into and online retail behemoth is expected to keep thriving into a new era thanks to a culture of innovation he helped nurture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A former English teacher whose often playful image shattered the stereotype of the drab Chinese executive, Ma officially leaves on Tuesday, his 55th birthday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The departure of charismatic founders from big tech companies typically causes hand-wringing and wobbling share prices, but not at Alibaba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company’s operational reins have for a couple of years now been in the hands of a respected team of executives who have kept it on E-commerce’s cutting-edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ma plans to put his vast fortune among China’s biggest at USD 41 billion into initiatives serving his first love, education, following the footsteps of a fellow tech innovator he admires: Bill Gates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ma was Alibaba’s driving force and a frequently irreverent ambassador for the company, known for stunts like a Michael Jackson-inspired dance at an Alibaba anniversary celebration two years ago and starring in his own kung fu short film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the transition to figures like CEO Daniel Zhang, and co-founder and executive vice chairman Joseph Tsai announced exactly a year ago may prove to be the “gold standard” for tech-company succession, said Jeffrey Towson, an equity investor and professor at Peking University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“He built a really robust culture at Alibaba and they are still just innovating like crazy.” Ma was a cash-strapped Chinese entrepreneur when he convinced friends to give him USD 60,000 to start Alibaba in the eastern city of Hangzhou in 1999.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With monthly active users of more than 750 million today, Alibaba helped to unlock China’s massive consumer power, coincidentally a key objective of the government today as it seeks to fuel domestic demand to lessen the reliance on fickle foreign trade.It\u2019s Taobao and Tmall platforms have helped countless businesses grow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jack Ma steps down next week as chairman of Alibaba, but the start-up he built into and online retail behemoth is expected to keep thriving into a new era thanks to a culture of innovation he helped nurture. A former English teacher whose often playful image shattered the stereotype of the drab Chinese executive, Ma […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69967,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69965\/revisions\/69967"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}