Curated by Alibaba Business School
Source: Hupan University
entrepreneurshipleadership
On 13 January 2020, Jack Ma joined the interview with 145 entrepreneurs who participated the 6 batch of enrolment of Hupan University. During the interview, Jack Ma had a short conversation with these entrepreneurs about leadership and Hupan University.
01
The biggest competitor of an entrepreneur is the future
Only those who are willing to learn can face to the future
Future is the biggest competitor to each of us.
There is no traditional enterprise but only backward ones; and there is no traditional entrepreneur but only those who live in the past (with outdated mind).** **For those entrepreneurs living in the past, the difficulties of 2019 are just the beginning; But for those who are willing to change themselves to adapt to the future and to see future as challenges, their opportunities has just begun to come.
So I think as Hupan students, we need to learn and research the basic law of doing business in order to master the methodology of judging the future.
Among the last generation of entrepreneurs in China, those successful ones are seldom trained by MBA, nor have they been senior managers in multinational companies. They are the ones who have made countless mistakes by trial and error and finally make it.
You guys have already made certain successes in the situation of today. It’s not easy that you still come to study here.
Please remember, the most important criteria to recruit professional managers/senior managers is not what they did in the previous company, but whether they have the desire and ability to learn.
I hope you guys can always maintain this spirit and capability of learning no matter you choose to come here or not. Because only those people who are willing and able to learn can face to the future.
We had never done retail, nor platform, payment, cloud computing before we started doing ecommerce. It is all because we are willing to learn and can find a group of people who are also willing to learn to work together with.
In Chinese, learning can be translated as “**学习”(Xue Xi). However, Xue and Xi are different. Xue means to tune in the information/knowledge, while Xi means absorb those information/knowledge and turn them to be something belong to self through practice. Many people can only Xue but without Xi and vice versa.** Those who can only Xue turn out to be scholars while those who practice Xi everyday finally turn out to be experts. Scholar and expert are different, experts come from practice.
So we have to combine Xue and Xi as the procedure: listen-think-practice, and then face to a real scenario after practice.
People need to expand their vision. There is an old saying in China, travelling 10 thousand miles is better than reading 10 thousands of books. And I believe talking to 10 thousands different people could be even better. Everyone has their own way of learning, but I want to point out the most important things: pay attention to the breadth, depth and angle of the learning, and implement into your daily practice frequently.
Everyone is waiting for opportunities. In my personal view, the opportunities are in everywhere today, but it depends on whether you have the insight.
Most of the people turn opportunities into disasters, however very few people can turn the disasters into opportunities. If you want to be one of those very few, what you are going to experience, the training you have both mentally and physically, as well as the knowledge structure you have should be different.
02
We hope to carry forward the Entrepreneurial Spirit
China needs entrepreneurs with true entrepreneurial spirit now more than ever. We hope to find and nurture them and carry forward the entrepreneurial spirit
We do not want to teach you how to make money, rather we hope to explore with you how to create value.
You have come to the wrong place if your motivation is to learn how to make money.
Making money is easy. If you can create true value, money will come naturally. If you cannot create value, the money you are making is not sustainable. This is why the single biggest challenge for any entrepreneur is to create true value.
Why do we set at least 30 employees and over 3 year in operation as the pre-conditions for your ventures?
Because it can be quite painful for entrepreneurs with little experience to go through Hupan’s program. Once I spoke at Beijing University, the students found my speech very lighthearted and funny. Only the people sitting in the front who have had startup experience really understood what I was talking about. You can tell that from their tearful laughter.
People find it funny and stupid when they hear that making money is easy. Is making money easy? Not really. What’s the challenge? The challenge is to create true value!
Making money is hard and easy at the same. The hardest thing is to create value in a sustainable way.
All individual and companies would encounter problems. If the society gives us the opportunity, we should add value to the society. If society does not give us the opportunity, we should take the opportunity to improve ourselves and add value to ourselves.
In the past, when there is an economic downturn, our company would focus on building capability for our managers and staff. Would you still go out when there is a storm going on? The more sensible thing to do is to find a shelter and think through what your company should do, can do and need to do. This is an important moment for internal reflection.
We are not teaching you how to start a business, rather how to grow a business sustainably.
Growing sustainably is very hard. You need to have a short wick if you want a candle to burn for longer. At the same time, if a wick can burn faster, the candle will be brighter.
Companies have to balance performance and sustainability. If you want to perform well, you have to remain active but if you want to live longer, you want to be less active. If you want to live longer and perform well, you have to think about the balance. If a company is constantly restless, it would not last very long. However, if it does not change at all, it will not do very well either. It is hard to gauge the balance point.
We are not teaching you how to start a business, rather how to be a happy entrepreneur.
We want to share what price one has to pay, what mistake one should not make, what bottom line one should not touch.
In the early days, the first three batches of Hupan students really hate to hear me talking about mission, vision and value. Now they cannot stop talking about mission, vision and value. They constantly remind themselves what they should do and not do. It is like a traffic light system, if you follow the traffic light and look out for the zebra crossing, you can avoid making a lot of mistakes.
We are not teaching you how to do a business, but we are teaching you how to be a better entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs are the biggest driving force of an enterprise, meanwhile, entrepreneurs are also the biggest bottleneck in the development of an enterprise.
Don’t blame your company’s poor development on the problem of model or society. As a matter of fact, it is your problem: whether you can breakthrough and penetrate yourself? You have to dare to give up, to pursue, to stand to your own principles.
There are many reasons why a company can’t develop well. Entrepreneur is the top reason. Because they are lack of self-discipline, or they are inclined to be feeling too full of themselves, having no confidence or too much confidence.
There are many ways of discipline. Except self-discipline, your competitors, customers, employees and the society can also help improve your discipline.
With each discipline, you have to think it through what you have to give up, what you need to keep, and what you can change. This is what an entrepreneur should do. Hupan University hopes to cultivate a group of good Chinese economic and business leaders and good CEOs.
The most important product of a company is your staff, and products (**you** sell) is the second. If you don’t improve your staff’s capacity, you won’t sell your products well.
Many CEOs only pay attention to products. Some value products while some value technology. I personally regard operation as the most important.
What is “operation”? It operates not only production relationship, incentive mechanism, but also means of production.** The production relationship is relevant to people, culture and the mechanism.
If you say a person is good-looking. How can you tell whether it’s because of nose, eyes, or mouth? I’d say that they all matter. What is most important is that how they can match them well and go together. The CEO’s responsibility is to collocate and combine incentive mechanism, production relations, people, capital and raw materials and make them all function. This is the most difficult thing.
Don’t learn from success, but learn from failure.**
Failure is the best nutrition. All big trees grow because of the rotten plants in the soil. Everyone’s success has a variety of reasons and factors. Don’t be jealous of others.
It is important for you to analyze how other people failed. Almost all failure experience can be summarized. Most of the failed companies are similar. Hence in Hupan University, you shall summarize failure experience, analyze failure stories, and learn from it so as to change yourself.
We shall not only reflect on our own faults, but also learn to share them directly and frankly, even with your employees. Don’t think that employees will look down on you because of it.
What is stubbornness, and what is persistence? Persistence is about us, but stubbornness is about me myself.
You can tell that when team is having a meeting, people would say, this person is very stubborn, that he cares about his “face” a lot. However if you think the issues from the perspective of “we”, from the team, you will slightly change your mind.
This is not a place to provide answers, but a place to inspire you to think.
We have no answer here, but everyone need to use their brains to think, to inspire each other, and to explore together. We want the Hupan University to be a mirror, reflecting what we know and what we don’t know.
Many of us have to come to a point that “I don’t know a lot of things”. Today our classmates are interviewing each other and it is good. When you learn to appreciate others, when you learn to be in awe of unknown things, you will be truly powerful.
What is the difference between a manager and a leader? What a leader always sees are good and hopeful things that others do not see (new opportunities), and what managers see is all bad (problem to be solved).
This is not a social club, it is a place in which we could learn from each other.
We are persistent, but not stubborn. Hupan university should have its own persistence. We hope to discover, train and cultivate a batch of entrepreneurs in the 21st century for the future of China and the world.
Today’s drastic changes will be a great opportunity in this century. Every technological revolution will give birth to century enterprises, not era enterprises, but century enterprises.
Many business schools have become social clubs. We don’t need such clubs. We don’t need money nor projects. We need to share our responsibilities, feelings, vision, mission and values as an entrepreneur.
We hope to make this place into a place in which people can share and exchange emotion, realm of thought as well as mind structure. I am particularly against that our classmates do business with each other. Do less business with each other but share more ideas. Borrowing money from each other and doing business with each other are not reliable.
It’s really not easy that you can find a group of people who are as similar as you — also starting businesses, having the same ideals, feelings, pains and worries. You should have a cup of tea, talk to each other. If you do business with each other, you may not even be able to maintain friendship with your classmates in the end.
Classmates should always share feelings and experiences with each other for life. Of course, if you can become good friends, when he is in trouble, you say, “I am behind you”. That you are behind this person rather than his business is really something great.
Alibaba Business School‘s vision is to empower entrepreneurs, women and youth globally through the education and training programs on the digital economy and the benefits it brings to larger society.__
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