Before I start with the rest of this article, I want to address that today is Remembrance Day. I feel blessed to live in this country and I recognize the sacrifices that were made for Canada by millions of lives worldwide.
For China, today is singles’ day, a day allocated to celebrate single-ness. Like the western Valentine’s Day, singles day has evolved to become a kind of seller heaven for e-markets, especially for Alibaba, who makes up for 80 % of total online sales.
Alibaba is a “testament to immense Chinese ingenuity and entrepreneurialism” (VanderKlippe, 2014), building an empire of online sales in a country with little credit cards and a distrust in things that cannot be touched. I suspect that in order to do achieve this feat Alibaba had to learn to and become efficient at many or all of the concepts we learn in class- from business ethics to people & culture.
I think it’s our job as students to follow news articles and successful businesses in order to learn more from them and to build on the knowledge we gained in class. Alibaba is a great example.