3.0 Jack Ma 马云
Jack Ma is one of the greatest innovators in the 21st century. Born and raised in China, Ma is a co-founder of one of the largest ecommerce company in the world, Alibaba Group. Ma was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang in China in 1964. During his early childhood, Jack Ma had an opportunity to learn English from tourists who visited Hangzhou, after the region gained global fame after the visit of the United States President, Richard Nixon in 1972 (Qian 2014). Soon after his visit, tourists from all over the world began trooping to this region, which created an opportunity for Ma to guide them to different tourist attraction sites in exchange for English lessons. He studied Bachelor of Arts in English.
马云是21世纪最伟大的创新者之一。马云在中国出生和长大，是全球更大的电子商务公司之一阿里巴巴集团的联合创始人。马于1964年出生于中国浙江杭州。1972年美国总统理查德·尼克松（Richard Nixon）访问杭州（钱学森，2014年）后，杭州在全球享有盛名，在此期间，马云（Jack Ma）曾有机会向游客学习英语。在他访问后不久，来自世界各地的游客开始成群结队地来到这个地区，这为马云创造了一个机会，让他们去不同的旅游景点学习英语。他用英语攻读文学学士学位。
Despite his lack of a background in technology, Jack Ma was fascinated by the internet after hearing about it from his friends. In this case, whereas Ma did not possess any formal education in any technology field, his interest in technology was facilitated by the fact that he is a highly motivated person. As a result, he focused on innovatively using the internet to establish a platform that allowed people to exchange information, which was later developed into one of the largest ecommerce platforms in the world. In reference to Collins, Hanges and Locke (2004), people with a high level of achievement motivations are likely to pursue entrepreneurial careers since it offers them more control over outcomes. Therefore, considering the fact that despite the elements that undermined his success as a child, Jack Ma focused on overcoming all odd in order to carve a niche for himself as a successful person in society.
尽管马云缺乏技术背景，但在从朋友那里听说互联网后，他还是被它迷住了。在这种情况下，尽管马云没有在任何技术领域受过任何正规教育，但他对技术的兴趣却因为他是一个积极性很高的人而变得更加浓厚。因此，他专注于创新性地利用互联网建立一个允许人们交换信息的平台，该平台后来发展成为世界上更大的电子商务平台之一。参考Collins、Hanges和Locke（2004年），具有高成就动机的人可能会追求创业事业，因为创业能让他们更好地控制结果。因此，考虑到这样一个事实，即尽管童年时代的成功受到各种因素的影响，马云还是专注于克服所有的怪癖，以便为自己在社会上创造一个成功人士的位置。
4.0 Innovation process 创新过程
Researchers and scholars across the globe agree that innovation is a process that goes through a number of stages namely: idea, testing of the idea, and its implementation. In reference to Rogers (2010), an empirical research that was conducted among farmers in Iowa on their innovation-decision process reveals that most farmers went through a series of stages that involved moving from awareness-knowledge to adoption of a decision. The findings by Rogers (2010) affirm the fact that innovation is a process rather than event and as such, there are critical stages that need to be followed in order to achieve true innovation in society. Importantly, whereas some researchers such as Rogers (2010) perceive the innovation process as a three-stage process, others such as Bathelt et al. (2017) perceive this process as a four-stage process, which includes identification of a specific problem that the innovation in question seeks to address. This report will adopt the four-stage innovation process in analysing how Jack Ma sported came up and implemented his innovation idea of Alibaba Group.
全球各地的研究人员和学者都认为，创新是一个经过多个阶段的过程，即：创意、创意测试和创意实施。参考Rogers（2010），对爱荷华州农民进行的一项关于其创新决策过程的实证研究表明，大多数农民经历了一系列阶段，包括从认识知识到采纳决策。罗杰斯（2010）的研究结果证实了创新是一个过程而非事件的事实，因此，为了在社会中实现真正的创新，需要遵循一些关键阶段。重要的是，罗杰斯（2010）等一些研究人员将创新过程视为一个三阶段的过程，而巴瑟尔特等（2017）等其他研究人员将该过程视为一个四阶段的过程，其中包括确定相关创新试图解决的具体问题。本报告将采用四个阶段的创新过程来分析马云是如何提出并实施其阿里巴巴集团的创新理念的。
4.1 Problem 问题
Despite the fact that most researchers and scholars focus on idea as the starting point when talking about innovation, there is a significant agreement among them that the major role of innovation is to solve a specific problem in society. In reference to Desouza (2009), most innovators focus on developing innovative solutions to address different problems that exist in society, thus ensuring the needs of individuals are met. Whereas this is the case, Desouza (2009) acknowledges that innovative ideas that emerge as a response to different problems in society are often narrower in scope and as such, they can easily be operationalized. One of the critical issues that can be observed in Jack Ma’s development of the Alibaba Group is that its idea was a response to the problem that small businesses in the Chinese economy were facing as far as online trading and finding information was concerned. In reference to Huang, Hu and Lu (2009), Alibaba Group was established with an aim of addressing the problem that Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) were as far as accessing online trading platforms not only to connect with consumers but also to reduce their cost of marketing their products. Note that prior to the establishment of Alibaba Group, SMEs in China needed to engage in door to door marketing of their products in order to reach their target consumers (Hu and Lu, 2009). Thus, Ma’s idea helped address the problem of businesses visibility through creating a platform that allowed marketers and their target consumers to easily connect with each other.
尽管大多数研究者和学者在谈论创新时都将理念作为出发点，但他们之间有一个重要的共识，即创新的主要作用是解决社会中的特定问题。参考Desouza（2009），大多数创新者专注于开发创新解决方案，以解决社会中存在的不同问题，从而确保满足个人需求。尽管如此，Desouza（2009）承认，作为对社会中不同问题的回应而出现的创新想法通常范围较窄，因此，它们很容易实施。马云在阿里巴巴集团的发展过程中可以观察到的一个关键问题是，阿里巴巴集团的想法是对中国经济中的小企业在网上交易和查找信息方面所面临问题的回应。参考Huang、Hu和Lu（2009），阿里巴巴集团成立的目的是解决中小企业（SME）访问在线交易平台的问题，这不仅是为了与消费者联系，也是为了降低其产品营销成本。请注意，在阿里巴巴集团成立之前，中国的中小企业需要对其产品进行挨家挨户的营销，以达到其目标消费者（Hu和Lu，2009）。因此，马云的想法有助于解决企业可见性的问题，通过创建一个平台，让营销人员及其目标消费者能够轻松地相互联系。