Business Management Assignment: Case Study Analysis of Alibaba Group

Question

Task: Context:
Innovation and creativity are growing in importance, within organisations pursuing excellence and growth, in a competitive business world. Organisations use various innovative methods and techniques to ensure competitive advantage within their market place and meet their customer’s needs. This assessment will encourage students to explore the methods and approaches undertaken by a leading organisation and to critique a global brand name. The aim of this assessment is to identify the success of Alibaba Group. Students will identify the attributes of the people, places, products and approaches that have made the Alibaba on of the most valuable companies in the world.

Instructions to complete business management assignment:
Students will review and critique the case study: Alibaba and the Future of Business by MING ZENG. Harvard Business Review. Sep/Oct2018. It may be helpful to print the case study and highlight useful sections and/or take notes as you read. The output will be a 1,200 word report that responds to the following four questions:

1. In the students view, how does innovation and strategy work together at Alibaba Group?
2. Identify the innovation approach the company has successfully used to identify customers’ needs, and how did it help them to continue to stay ahead of the competition?
3. What role does ‘Smart Business’ play in the company’s present success?
4. What roles do leaders like Jack Ma play on companies like Alibaba? Whatdoes he bring, personally, to the organisation?
You should undertake further reading on Alibaba, in order to enhance your analysis. Any additional reading must be properly referenced in your report.

MING ZENG. (2018). Alibaba and the Future of Business. Harvard Business Review, 96(5), 88–96. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.laureate.net.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN= 131356796&site=ehost-live

Answer

Introduction
The current business management assignment examines the case study of Alibaba Group in a detailed manner. In this current age of globalisation and technological advent, innovation and creativity have growing importance to compete in the current business scenario. Organisations are exploring various core competencies to establish competitive advantages in the market, and satisfy customer needs.Alibaba Group, a global e-Commerce company has undertaken various innovative approaches and strategies to become one of the valuable companies in the world.

1. Innovation and strategy functioning together at Alibaba Group
Innovation involves creating something new, for which the consumers are ready to pay. The strategy includes making choices between feasible choices and is a plan for harnessing operations, marketing, finance and R&D for the attainment of a competitive goal. Innovation is one of how strategic goals can be achieved. At Alibaba Group, the entire team is devoted to creating a special innovative ecosystem (Kim, & Chen, 2016). This ecosystem consisted of businesses, consumers and the environment, where one component interacted with another. While 96% of the world's executives have included innovation as being their strategic priority, there is lacking direction in such innovations to optimize the same. Such innovative efforts were backed by the concrete strategic imperative to supply the essential resources such that innovative efforts would succeed (Ding et al, 2018).Innovation consists of the primary drivers of competitive advantages in today’s businesses. Successful business leaders currently are those who have been successful in adapting innovation as their business strategy. Amongst the various global businesses which have adopted innovation as their business strategy, one is Alibaba Group. Innovation strategy does not include innovative tactics, but it maps the organisation’s vision, mission and value proposition for the defined consumer market, which here is the retail consumer market. It has been successful in adopting diverse innovative framework with concrete strategies to back them. The value-driven component of Alibaba’s business rose from its capabilities to undertake innovative efforts and then make it functional with associated coordination, which was undertaken through strategies (ZENG, 2018).Alibaba's business success in China supported robust growth elsewhere in the world. With strategies to back up its innovative efforts it always had access to the needed resources to attain its goals (Jaiswal, 2018). The strategic imperative of the business was focussed upon its business goal and the innovative efforts were also directed to leverage such goals. To sum up in the absence of strategic efforts no innovative goals will be easy to achieve.

2. Innovation approach of Alibaba to stay ahead of the competition
Innovations are driving corporations which in turn is enabling corporations to be ahead of competition. Corporations, in order to innovate are regularly across the globe are exploring a host of strategic imperatives that can allow them to compete and stay ahead of the competition. Innovative approaches adopted by companies are focussed upon each successfully identifying consumer needs and demands from their consumer niches. Companies that are successfully able to identify consumer needs are remaining ahead of the competition; however, it is a continuous and exhaustive process, requiring constant innovation (binti Abdullah, &bintiHanafi, 2019). Similarly, Alibaba Group, a globally leading e-Commerce company, and China's largest e-Commerce company have a collection of various online platforms. The corporation acts like a Smart Business, where each component of the business shares a common goal.Alibaba has the advantage of emerging as a digital business with data-readiness, which provided them with capabilities to transform with ease into Smart businesses. Smart businesses have capabilities to coordinate across multiple platforms and coordinate amongst various players in the ecosystem. These varied participants in the ecosystem share data collected from reliable and unreliable sources. Then they apply machine -learning technological frameworks to identify consumer needs and demands more accurately. Capabilities within such an ecosystem with the aid of AI also devise and propose products and services that would enable attracting consumers (Zeng, 2018). Automated decisions with the analytical capabilities of participants across cross-functional platforms ensure data obscuring through every interaction to create a big data warehouse. The various business activities of the Alibaba Group are mediated using software, which enables the application of machine learning and ignoring human-related errors in data processing. API along with other interface protocols provides smooth interaction between software systems and finally to make sense of data outcomes in real times.

3. Role of ‘Smart Business’ play in Alibaba’s success
Smart businesses possess tremendous capabilities and have considerable potential in attaining business goals. Smart businesses offer a platform where the multi-departmental executives of the business coordinate across online networks and platforms then apply machine learning technology to leverage data efficiently. Smart Businesses offer a tech-enabled model allowing operational decisions to be undertaken by machines for the dynamically transforming and changing consumer preferences and market conditions (Zeng, 2018). Adaptation of Smart Business model for Alibaba to match up the current needs identified by the business moreover, specifically identifying consumer preferences over its competitors. This allowed the business its current success by being able to identify which product to position in the market condition and which products to promote. The smart business model allowedAlibaba to make use of data and information collected and then apply machine learning for its operational decisions as well. Smart Business also enabled sharing such decisions with cross-functional and multi-disciplinary teams so that other teams could respond in a dynamical manner and almost instantaneously to such decision (ulHaq, Majeed, Magoulas, & Jamal, 2020). During the time Alibaba brought about such a model in business, retail companies were seen to be struggling with their brick and mortar framework, which led to the success of the company.

4. Roles do leaders like Jack Ma play on companies like Alibaba
Leadership is crucial for companies that want to succeed among their peer companies. While Alibaba was born as an online business and data ready, it could adapt to Smart Business and other technological adaptation almost immediately. However, the success of such businesses requires a visionary contribution from its leader who guides the achievement of the company. The role of leaders like Jack Ma on companies like Alibaba is that of a digital visionary, with an understanding of the future of the business (Kim, 2018). Jack Ma's vision brought about his contribution of vision by enabling other leaders within the organisation to respond to the dynamic environment of societal, technological and economic changes. He offered guidance to form a strong and loyal foundation on which the business could grow. His success does not lie in being the tech guy but rather in the innovation of regenerating a sense of culture and purpose. His undeterred role in convincing every employee, investor, and business partner to trust in him contributed to the success of the business. He united all under a common goal under his supervision. With his capability, he hired people with superior skills for the company to make it successful. His contribution includes his tenacity and clear vision to chase and achieve what he believed will deliver success for the company. His popular leadership qualities and skill include never giving up and giving importance to his employees' ideas. With his transformational leadership style, he was able to achieve the ones though unachievable for the company.

Conclusion
In conclusion, Alibaba Group’s adoption of the Smart Business model has enabled it to stay ahead of competitive and function in a coordinated manner. Alibaba has been successfully able to establish a proven model that works and with the capability to transform the old industrial economy. Thestrategic imperative of Alibaba Group was focussed upon its business goal and the innovative efforts were also directed to leverage such goals, which led to the success of its business. Alibaba Group, a globally leading e-Commerce company, and China's largest e-Commerce company have a collection of various online platforms. Alibaba has the advantage of emerging as a digital business with data-readiness, which provided them with capabilities to transform with ease into Smart businesses. Such innovations led to the success of the company. Alibaba Group’s smart business model brought it success when retail companies were seen to be struggling with their brick and mortar framework. Jack Ma’s popular leadership qualities and skill include never giving up and giving importance to his employees' ideas. With his transformational leadership style, he was able to achieve the ones though unachievable for the company.

References
binti Abdullah, N., &bintiHanafi, H. (2019, October). E-Proceedings of 2nd Connect-Us Conference (CuC 2019). In e-Proceedings of 2nd Connect-Us Conference (CuC 2019) (p. 87). Accessed from

Ding, D., Chong, G., Chuen, D. L. K., & Cheng, T. L. (2018). From ant financial to Alibaba's rural Taobao strategy–how Fintech is transforming social inclusion. In Handbook of Blockchain, Digital Finance, and Inclusion, Volume 1 (pp. 19-35). Academic Press. DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-810441-5.00002-6.

Jaiswal, B. K. (2018). E-commerce of Handicraft. Language. Accessed fromhttps://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bimal_Jaiswal/publication/331742924_E-commerce_of_Handicraft_Degree_Programme_in_Logistics_Engineering_E-commerce_of_Handicraft_Case_South_Asian_Handicraft/links/5c8a735e45851564fade3800/E-commerce-of-Handicraft-Degree-Programme-in-Logistics-Engineering-E-commerce-of-Handicraft-Case-South-Asian-Handicraft.pdf

Kim, Y. C. (2018). Alibaba: Jack Ma’s Unique Growth Strategy and the Future of Its Global Development in the Chinese Digital Business Industry. In The Digitization of Business in China (pp. 219-247).Business management assignmentPalgrave Macmillan, Cham. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-79048-0_9.

Kim, Y. C., & Chen, P. C. (2016).Alibaba's strategic drift.

ZENG, M. (2018).Alibaba and the Future of Business. Harvard Business Review, 96(5), 88–96.

ulHaq, A., Majeed, A., Magoulas, G. D., & Jamal, A. (2020). Transformative Power of Smart Technologies Enabled by Advances in AI: Changing Landscape for Digital Marketing. In Handbook of Research on Innovations in Technology and Marketing for the Connected Consumer (pp. 1-17).IGI Global.DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-0131-3.ch001

Zeng, M. (2018). Smart Business: What Alibaba's Success Reveals about the Future of Strategy. Harvard Business Press.