In many occasions, Alibaba Group Founder Jack Ma expresses the idea that he wanted Alibaba to be live for 102 years(a strange number). But why 102 years, but not 100 years or some other years?
In an interview conducted by Stanford University, the interviewer, Yahoo Founder Jerry Yang, asked this question why Jack Ma wanted Alibaba to live 102 years. Jack Ma gave his answer to this question.
"In China, everybody wanted to make a company last over 100 years. This becomes a slogan, nobody takes it seriously. So if you want to give the KPI driven people, you should be very specific, then people know it's serious. We were born in 1999, so we had one year in last century. And this century we want to have one hundred years. Next century one year. 102 years to cross three centuries." said Jack Ma.
This is the hope Jack Ma has on the company he founded. He understands it's not that easy to keep a company alive and flourish for such a long time. Every step is critical given we are living in a fast changing world where companies emerge and disappear. But it seems Jack Ma is prepared for that as he mentioned in many places.
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