Sustainability Condition of Open Innovation: Dynamic Growth of Alibaba from SME to Large Enterprise

Jinhyo Joseph Yun, Xiaofei Zhao, KyungBae Park and Lei Shi
Additional contact information
Jinhyo Joseph Yun: Department of Open Innovation and Business Model, Open Innovation Academy of SOI, and DGIST, Daegu 42988, Korea
Xiaofei Zhao: Department of Open Innovation and Business Model, Open Innovation Academy of SOI, and DGIST, Daegu 42988, Korea
KyungBae Park: Department of Business Administration, Sangji University, Wonju 26339, Korea
Lei Shi: Department of Environmental Planning and Management, Tsinghua University, Bejing 100084, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 11, 1-24

Abstract: Research Question: Open innovation and the open business model exaggerate complexity (a transaction cost) in addition to the realization of emergence and its lock-in. Within a short period, Alibaba has become one of the global top e-commerce companies with several open innovation business models. Our research question was: “How could Alibaba become a global top e-commerce company in China in such a short time?” Research Method: We chose a deep interview method, participatory observation, and meta-analysis to answer this research question. Research Result: Alibaba has applied global, creative e-commerce business models through open innovation in a short time. In addition, it has overcome complexity—i.e., the cost of open innovation and the force that breaks down a company—through an open innovation-friendly culture. This is a “Jack-Ma style consumer confidence and new Guanxi culture”, a new and strong Chinese corporate culture. Alibaba has also undergone the expansion of its open business model feedback loop platform. This study investigated the expanded open business model feedback loop platform, the continuously strengthened open-innovation-friendly culture, and complexity, with the latter being the cost of open innovation, which was controlled by an open-innovation-friendly culture and open business model feedback loop.

Keywords: Alibaba; open innovation; complexity; open innovation culture; open business model feedback loop platform; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/11/4379/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/11/4379/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:11:p:4379-:d:363427

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().