Evolution of the Platform Organization: 3 Haier, Rendanheyi, and Zhang Ruimin’s Vision

Haier’s Chairman, Zhang Ruimin, is one of the world’s most well-known management thinkers, at least in the rarefied world of business strategy and management. His innovations in organization and management are revolutionary, and his vision of where the world of business is headed is a radical departure from business as usual. Haier is the best case study I’ve found for the promise of platform ecosystems and organizational society, as explored in the next section, but we have to revisit Haier’s past to understand the evolution of Chairman Zhang’s thinking over time.

However, Zhang’s vision and the innovations he has introduced at Haier are not generally known in the larger context of business in the West. This is partly due to the fact that Haier is based in China, and until the past decade the company’s products and brands were not well-known outside of Asia. However, Haier is now a global concern, and its practices are becoming more well-known through a growing number of articles and case studies that have been published in the past…