The Hbr Alibaba Group Case Study

9-710-436

REV: APRIL 26, 2010

JULIE WULF

Alibaba Group

At Alibaba, strategy and organization go hand-in-hand. Every year we change the organizational structure

in tandem with changes in strategy.1

— Jack Ma, Founder and CEO of Alibaba Group

Jack Ma, Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group, stared through the fog at the cable stays of the

Hangzhou Bay Bridge whistling past on his drive to the offices of Taobao (淘宝, “hunting for

treasures”), Alibaba’s online marketplace for Chinese retailers and consumers. The longest transoceanic bridge in the world had a long gestation period: the feasibility studies took a decade and

even after their approval the plans changed to connect the northern end of the bridge to Jiaxing,

rather than the Jinshan suburb of Shanghai as initially planned. When the bridge was opened to the

public just over a year earlier, in Ma 2008, it cut the trip between the cities of Ningbo and Shanghai

ay

and southern Jiangsu province from 400 kilometers (km, equivalent to 249 miles) to just 80 km

(50 miles), boosting economic integration and development in the Yangtze River Delta, which was

home to 72.4 million people livin in almost 100,000 square km of land comprising Shanghai,

ng

Zhejiang province, and Jiangsu province.2

Ma couldn’t help but smile to himself as he thought of the obvious similarities between the

Hangzhou Bay Bridge and the Alibaba Group of companies. Just as the proposed bridge changed

form as its plans progressed, the Alibaba Group evolved over an equally long period from its

founding by Ma and a small group of friends in 1998, to the point where it now captured

approximately one half of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce in China and over 70% of online

shopping. The privately held Grou of internet-based businesses also brought millions of people

up

closer together, connecting approximately 200 million users in more than 240 countries and regions.

Based in Hangzhou, Alibaba Group offered a host of...