Understanding Alibaba’s World
Bought the (e-)book Alibaba’s World (author: Porter Erisman) today, and finished reading it an hour ago. Read mixed reviews of the book before I bought this, but read a sample on Kindle first, and proceeded to buy it. Here’s a brief of what I think about the book:
Context: Before picking up this book, apart from having known Alibaba as the giant e-commerce play from China, I had read about Alibaba in two storylines — one about Alibaba and Yahoo!, and second about Alibaba and One97/Paytm/@vijayshekhar. I had not known much about Jack Ma and Alibaba’s story, but have been curious nonetheless.
Starting Point: Did this book prove to be a good starting point for understanding the journey Alibaba as a company and Jack Ma as a founder went through? Definitely yes. The narrative from a person who himself was involved from a outward-facing angle at Alibaba is a strong reason for this. Did the book also bring out the execution journey of Alibaba as well? No. Porter narrates the story from his experiences in the role as head of international marketing, and (rightly) doesn’t talk about things he wasn’t directly involved in, including actual operationalisation of Alibaba.
Ease of Read: The book has been a quick, easy read. Nowhere I found the storyline getting entangled or complicated. Porter stays within his boundary of explaining what he observed — he doesn’t make any assumptions about what Jack Ma or other executives at Alibaba “thought”. People who prefer plain experiential accounts would find the relatively straightforward tone of the author comforting (which is contrary to how I perceive the tone of a head of PR or head of marketing to be).
How to use the book: As a starting point. Nothing more, nothing less. If you want to learn about Alibaba’s and Jack Ma’s journey, you’ll need to read more or find out somebody who knows more. This book will quickly give a shape to the structure you’ll need to fill gaps in. I’ll proceed to find out other sources as well.
Am I glad I read this book? Definitely yes.
