THE ALIBABA MINDSET

Today’s article will be focused on a man I admire so much, the brain behind The Alibaba group, Jack Ma. I will be focusing on the entrepreneurial mind-set he had before the dream of Alibaba came to a reality. Before we dive in, a little introduction about the group will be perfect.

Alibaba group is one of china’s largest e-commerce companies. For those who haven't heard of Alibaba, Its is more like the Ebay, Amazon, Paypal and Yahoo of China all in one. To have an in depth knowledge about the company, you can click here. It currently has ten other subsidiaries (a few of which are not included in the picture. click here to view them all) which are also doing perfectly fine. Alibaba recently launched an IPO (Initial Public offering) on Wall Street New York stock exchange worth $21.8 billion which is the highest the stock market has ever recorded in the history of stock market trading and its is currently worth more than Amazon and Ebay combined and currently Walmart. Now who wouldn't be interested in the brain behind this organisation? Well, I am!

Jack Ma, a former English teacher from Hangzhou, China has valued these three sets of people; Customer, Employee and Shareholders in the past 15 years of business career. He is, currently worth $23 billion and one of the new faces of the Forbes list of world's most powerful people.

What then is an Entrepreneurial mind-set?

An Entrepreneurial mind-set is/are a set/sets of attitude/attitudes held by an entrepreneur. Since an entrepreneur is at the heart of the business, He/she has to have some certain attitudes before going into business. Here are some of the attitudes of Mind-set an entrepreneur should have. I will be relating these attitudes to our role model for today, The Humble Jack (as I like to call him). 

1. Need for Achievement
2. Individualism
3. Control
4. Focus
5. Optimism

 THE NEED FOR ACHIEVEMENT: This is basically a preference for challenge and an acceptance for personal responsibilities for outcomes. Jack Ma’s mission (and the mission of Alibaba group till today) is to help smaller businesses prosper. He identified the need and accepted it as a responsibility for him to create a platform where smaller businesses can conduct their own businesses. This came out of the frustration of trying to carry out his own business from his small apartment in china and he decided to make it his priority to help other small businesses prosper. Note that I highlighted the word 'help' and 'his priority', because he saw a need first, before the personal end gain. Jack ma said Most people that try to be an entrepreneur today think about the end gains first instead  trying to identify a need that is both beneficial to yourself and the society in the long run.

 INDIVIDUALISM: is a need or often a preference to go against the norm. When Jack Ma discovered the idea of creating a platform for smaller businesses to trade back in 1996 in Silicon Valley, it seemed like a stupid idea to others. He told his idea to some of his friends and some venture capitalist in the US and most of them thought it was stupid. Bringing trading and commerce to the internet then was going against the norm in China. Jack Ma said that he once thought of being a General in the army, because that was the norm then. He later gave it a second thought and chose to do things differently, forgetting about the past and looking the future and a better China. (Your present idea should not just satisfy a present need, it should also be subject to changing developments for growth in the future).

Some people may have read or heard these things a few times, but for those that have no come across these points, here is an insight into developing an idea for a business or an organization. These attitudes are also applicable not just for entrepreneurs, but can also be directed towards organizations seeking innovation by focusing on satisfying a need and doing things differently.

Since I am not the only writer here, The remaining part of this article will be posted soon.

Until then, Stay Focused and Bring about the change that you want to see!

Bukola Komolafe

Bizlead Writer

Email: bukola1405@gmail.com