Innovation Report On Alibaba

Running head: INNOVATION REPORT ON ALIBABA
INNOVATION REPORT ON ALIBABA
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Introduction
Alibaba Group Holding Limited also known as Alibaba Group and Alibaba is a Chinese
multinational technology company that specializes in e-commerce, retail and information and
technology. It was founded in April 4 in 1999 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. Its headquarters are
in Yuhang District, Hangzhou (Rui, 2018). It has been 20 years since it was founded and it has
grown largely from a start company to serving people worldwide. It provides services through
web portals, electronic payment, search engines for shopping as well as cloud computing
services on three levels: consumer-to-consumer (C2C), business-to-consumer (B2C) and
business-to-business (B2B) (Maria, 2017). The online profit and the sales that the company made
had exceeded all the US retailers like Amazon and Walmart in the year 2015. It has been
expanding since and the revenues have been rising for the organisation by triple percentage
points year after year. The present report focuses on analyzing the leadership practices and
innovation practices. It also analyses the challenges faced by them. The report also provides the
recommendations that the organisation can make use of in order to tackle these organisational
challenges.
The business case for innovation
Any business organisation can thrive only when the leaders of the company are invested
in the progress of the company through acknowledging the importance of innovation. Innovation
is incredibly necessary in today’s world especially in the way an organisation works. In the 21st
century, the world has become heavily dependent upon technology and the use of internet in
almost every activity that people engage in. Innovation practices can increase the economic
growth that can provide both the organisation as well as the nation the competitive advantage

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over other companies and help maintain its sustainability (Yang, 2018). Alibaba is a group of
company that has always recognized the importance of innovation in taking the company ahead.
It has been recognized as the most innovative company as it has established itself as the global
innovator by blending the real world with the digital world in shopping experiences and makes
the best of both the worlds.
Alibaba’ mission of “making it easy to do business everywhere” is the result of the
company’s emphasis on increasing its potential in learning and enhancing its industry knowledge
as well as technical capabilities through open innovation. The company has recorded a high
market performance due to its investment in new products (Haar & Ernst, 2016). Innovation is
introducing of new ideas or products in the company that can help the organisation progress and
make a mark in the market that will eventually strengthen its position. The organisations can
bring innovation through replacing the business processes to improve the productivity, develop
new products and services to meet the demands of the consumers that keeps on changing rapidly.
If the businesses fail in bringing innovative practices to the table then the company risks losing
the market share to the competitors, losing profits and efficiency, and the worst of all, going out
of business (Lewinn, Kenney & Murmann, 2016).
However, Alibaba has been able to create the world’s biggest online shopping site by
using automation, algorithms and networks in order to serve the customers in a better way. Ming
Zeng who is the chief strategy officer of Alibaba highlights that the companies in the future
would use artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to further their business in the
market. Alibaba invests in innovations for internet technology and new business model
innovations (Jia et al., 2018). Alipay is a payment platform that has modernized the way the
Chinese customers spend. Alibaba also has a cloud initiative called AliCloud that manages the