Jack Ma, a founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, shared a few tips at the 2018 World Economic Forum
Jack Ma executive chairman of the Alibaba group founded Alibaba in his apartment in China in 1999 with a group of 18 co-founded. He was one of the first people in China to really understand the potential of the internet and has utilized it to help small businesses succeed in a global Marketplace today. The Alibaba group is the largest retail in mobile, company in the world with more than half a billion consumers shopping on its marketplaces and tens of millions of businesses selling their products. The company has directly and indirectly employed for more than 30 million jobs. And Jack said the company is just getting started. He has Ambitions of creating a hundred million jobs and reaching 2 billion people. Jack also has a long history with the world economic Forum he first came to Davos in 2001 as a young Global leader he sits on the board of the world economic forum and he recently joined the board of Labor shapers.
This is what he said " I was the first, I knew nothing about technology, I knew nothing about management. But the thing is, you don't have to know a lot of things. You have to find the people who are smarter than you are. For so many years, I always tried to find the people smarter than I am. And when you find so many smart people. My job is to make sure that smart people can work together. And then if smart people can work together. It's easier. The vision you believe. Because stupid people can work together easily but Smart people can never work together!"
Do this when you're 30
When you are 20-30 years old, you should follow a good boss. Join a good company tovlearn how to do things properly. When you are 30 to 40 years old, if you want to do something yourself, just do it. You still can afford to lose, to fail. But when you are 40 to 50 years old, my suggestion is that you should do things that you are good at. Not do something that's very interesting. I want to try something new. It's a bit dangerous more. When you are 50 to 60 years old, spend time training and developing young people, the next generation. When you are over 60 years old, you'd better stay with your grandchildren.
Globalisation cannot be stopped
I think globalisation cannot be stopped. Nobody can stop globalisatioon, nobody can stop trade. I think globalisation did a fantastic job in the past 30 years. Enriched a lot of countries, but of course, it caused a lot of problems. Young people did not have opportunities, small businesses did not have opportunities, developing countries were neglected. But it's only 30 years. It's a baby. Today, we have better technology. We have better knowledge about globalisation. And it's our generation's responsibility or opportunity to improve it. Tell me how can you stop globalisation?
If we don't change the way we teach, we will be in trouble
Education is a big challenge now. If we do not change the way we teach, 30 years later, we will be in trouble. Because the way we teach, the things we teach our kids, are the things from the past 200 years. It is knowledge-based. And we cannot teach our kids to compete with machines. They are smarter. We have to teach something unique that a machine can never catch up with us.
I never thought I could be a CEO
I never thought I could be a CEO. I never thought that later I'd become a good CEO. One of the things I learned is from teachers. As a teacher, it's a very important part of the character of a teacher is the teacher always expects his students to become better. If you don't have this kind of thinking. It's lousy. It's a terrible teacher!
