ABSTRACT
Few companies transform themselves unless being forced by financial difficulties or business context changes. Nevertheless, Alibaba has been continuously renewing its capabilities and transforming its business ecosystem. In Chapter 2, we explore Alibaba's proactive transformation from an ecommerce platform to a whole digital empire, which ensures an increasingly better satisfaction of customer needs and better fit into the changing business context. In particular we will discuss the development, layer by layer, of Alibaba's business ecosystem and single out five features of Alibaba's business ecosystem: digital, interdependent, focal player, co-evolution with the context and cross industry diversification.
