I totally agree with Darren’s opinion. As a Chinese student, I always pay great attention to Jack Ma’s company, Alibaba. Not only because I spend hundreds of dollars shopping on Taobao.com, also because Jack himself is a great model for a commerce student to learn from.

This smart businessman, the richest person in China, Jack Ma, failed to pass Gaokao, the Chinese college entrance examination when he graduated from high school. His first job was an English teacher, his first business was a small translation agency. However he sensitively smelled the trend of IT revolution and grabbed this chance, founded his great Alibaba empire.

My analysis shows that Ma’s success comes from these elements:

1. Sensitive to chance and trend. This is the most important skill that an entrepreneur should have. It helps you grab opportunity and avoid threats. It’s pretty similar to SWOT analysis skill.

2. Strong leadership. Ma is good at building and creating organizational culture, like Darren mentioned, in Ali, people have “the sense of purpose and a belief that anything is possible”.

3. Global view. Ma always try to push his business global and keeps learning from foreign rivals.

4. Braveness ,hardworking and innovation spirit. In Chinese culture, people are conservative. Therefore being brave and being the pioneer means a lot to a businessman. Of course all of above must be built on the foundation of hard work.

Source: https://blogs.ubc.ca/winghongtong/2014/09/24/hangzhou-the-alibaba-hub-that-minted-thousands-of-internet-millionaires/