As a company, we have to be very transparent. We are in a business very related to finance, and I want this company to last long, and I want this company to be audited by everyone.
Interpretation
Transparency in business fosters trust and sustainability.
In the quote, Jack Ma emphasizes the importance of transparency within a company, especially in the finance sector, where trust is paramount. He indicates that by being open and allowing audits, the business can build credibility and endure in the long term, ensuring its accountability and reliability to stakeholders.
In practice
This quote can be used in a business conference to highlight the importance of ethical practices.
Hong Kong people say Hong Kong needs to preserve its uniqueness. I say Hong Kong's uniqueness is in its diversity, its tolerance of difference cultures... China does not want to see Hong Kong in decline. I have full confidence in its future.
If we are a good team and know what we want to do, one of us can defeat tons of them.
It's not that other countries steal jobs from you guys. It's your strategy. Distribute the money and things in a proper way.
Helping doing business easier, we choose the name Alibaba because it is a global company. It is founded in China, but it was created for the world.
In the beginning I just wanted to survive. For the first three years, we made zero revenue. I remember many times when I was trying to pay up, the restaurant owner would say, 'Your bill was paid.' And there would be a note saying, 'Mr. Ma, I'm your customer on the Alibaba platform. I made a lot of money, and I know you don't, so I paid the bill.'
Even if your competitor is still small in size or weak, you should take him seriously and treat him as a giant. Likewise, even if your competitor is massive in size, you shouldn't regard yourself as a weakling.
When you are making a decision about how best to serve your customers, your own experience is often a better guide than a more sophisticated analysis of the market.
A great business has to have a conscience. You have to know who you are and who you are not.
**New business concepts are always, always the product of lucky foresight.** That's right - the essential insight doesn't come out of any dirigiste planning process; it comes form some cocktail of happenstance, desire, curiosity, ambition and need. But at the end of the day, there has to be a degree of foresight -- a sense of where new riches lie. So radical innovation is always one part fortuity and one part clearheaded vision. [first-line bold by author] [2002] p.23
The sooner you cut off negotiations with someone you shouldn't be dealing with, it gives you the chance to move on to a more profitable deal.
In the final analysis, finding a way to do clean business and not to pay bribes actually improves your bottom line.
The antidote to inequality is equality. The question is how do you achieve equality? I believe that, for business, which is where I can speak, we have to shift from shareholder maximization to stakeholder maximization.
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