Customers first, employees second, and shareholders third.
Interpretation
Prioritizing customers and employees leads to a better business outcome than simply focusing on profits for shareholders.
Jack Ma's quote emphasizes the importance of placing customers and employees at the forefront of business priorities. By nurturing customer satisfaction and employee well-being, a company can foster loyalty and productivity, which ultimately benefits shareholders in the long run, making them the third priority in this framework.
In practice
During a conference on corporate responsibility, this quote can be used to highlight a company's commitment to ethical practices.
Hong Kong people say Hong Kong needs to preserve its uniqueness. I say Hong Kong's uniqueness is in its diversity, its tolerance of difference cultures... China does not want to see Hong Kong in decline. I have full confidence in its future.
If we are a good team and know what we want to do, one of us can defeat tons of them.
It's not that other countries steal jobs from you guys. It's your strategy. Distribute the money and things in a proper way.
Helping doing business easier, we choose the name Alibaba because it is a global company. It is founded in China, but it was created for the world.
In the beginning I just wanted to survive. For the first three years, we made zero revenue. I remember many times when I was trying to pay up, the restaurant owner would say, 'Your bill was paid.' And there would be a note saying, 'Mr. Ma, I'm your customer on the Alibaba platform. I made a lot of money, and I know you don't, so I paid the bill.'
Even if your competitor is still small in size or weak, you should take him seriously and treat him as a giant. Likewise, even if your competitor is massive in size, you shouldn't regard yourself as a weakling.
Wherever we are seeing something getting used, that to us is an early indicator that there might be something that people want. And then let's figure out how to make that great. And then let's go figure out monetization.
If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you're putting yourself out of business.
The business of business should not be about money. It should be about responsibility. It should be about public good, not private greed
Money goes out first to pay expenses and then comes back as profits later - if at all. The high rate of failure of new businesses makes painfully clear that there is nothing inevitable about the money coming back.
Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made.
If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control.
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