Design Thinking at Alibaba

Running head: DESIGN THINKING AT ALIBABA
Design Thinking at Alibaba
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1DESIGN THINKING AT ALIBABA
Executive Summary
This report has been elaborated on discussing about the design thinking process and
initiatives taken by Alibaba, a Chinese retail firm. It has highlighted that various different
ways by means of which this company was impacted by the advances of 'design thinking'
movement. With the same, it has also shed light on the impacts of design thinking on
Alibaba’s business operation and has provided several different ways by means of which the
organisation’s innovation strategy best responds to the innovation trend mentioned in the
paper. It has been found that with the help of design thinking, Alibaba is now able to scale
and manage the staggering amounts of information, transactions and data, which was
otherwise impossible.

2DESIGN THINKING AT ALIBABA
Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................2
2. Discussion..............................................................................................................................2
2.1. Company Background and innovation trend...................................................................2
2.2. Concepts and their relationships.....................................................................................3
2.3. How the creation of an innovation strategy ensures strategic alignment within
organisations and why it is important....................................................................................4
2.4. Impact of the selected innovation trend on Alibaba........................................................4
2.5. Business model canvas....................................................................................................5
3. Recommendations..................................................................................................................7
4. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................8
References:.................................................................................................................................9

3DESIGN THINKING AT ALIBABA
1. Introduction
In contemporary era, the leading companies all around the globe are integrating the
design thinking techniques into their strategies of innovation for expanding their insights and
helping the executives to envision some new possibilities. Design thinking has the potential
of catapulting the companies to dazzle new heights. Most of the large corporations worldwide
are embracing design thinking as of the fact that the great designers could help the ones with
very little or no imagination for vividly experiencing a world that does not yet exist. For this
report, Alibaba, a Chinese retail firm, has been selected as an example of a business that was
impacted by the advances of 'design thinking' movement as described in the paper by Liedtka
(2018). This paper shall highlight the impacts of design thinking on Alibaba’s business
operation and would provide several different ways by means of which the organisation’s
innovation strategy best responds to the innovation trend mentioned in the paper.
2. Discussion
2.1. Company Background and innovation trend
Alibaba is a Chinese retail and e-commerce firm that is taking many popular global
advances in the e-commerce ecosystems and catering to the increasing demands of the huge
and growing middle class customers of China. It was founded in the year 1999 by Jack Ma. It
provides a type of free services to each and every one and contains B2B, B2C and C2C
services. The company also provides search engine in Taobao.com, some secured e-payment
services and the data centric cloud computing services. In the year 2009, the company created
a Single’s day, holiday and Valentines’ day culturally adapted for the Chinese population
(Zhou, Lee & Hyman, 2017). In the year 2011, the people who were single given gifts one
another through Alibaba at 11:11 a.m. or p.m. The time was set so because of the fact that all
of the 1’s add up to many “singles”. Also, in the year 2013, the company became the first