Jack Ma steps into ‘mistakes’ brouhaha to boost Alibaba’s morale, urges staff to embrace change and prepare for AI to upend e-commerce

‘We hacked away at the big-company disease,’ so reform is the only way out, according to Ma’s memo to Alibaba employees. ‘We turned the company from a cumbersome organisation into one that is simple and agile, where efficiency comes first, and the market comes first,’ Ma wrote. — SCMP

Alibaba Group Holding has fundamentally changed its corporate culture to put customers first in its adaptation of technology, its co-founder Jack Ma wrote, as he stepped into a social media hubbub over the hubris that caused what was once the world’s largest ecommerce platform to lose ground to competitors.

“We hacked away at the big-company disease,” according to Ma’s memo to Alibaba employees. “We turned the company from a cumbersome organisation into one that is simple and agile, where efficiency comes first, and the market comes first.”