It’s Singles’ Day 2019! Woooohooooo!!! I am doing a little dance here in my hotel in Hangzhou. I look ridiculous. Singles’ Day launched at midnight last night and I was at the media center in Hangzhou for the opening (see above photo). And I spent yesterday with the Alibaba team getting a bit of a […]
This is Part 2 of my questions for Alibaba on Singles’ Day 2019. I’m on my way to Hangzhou shortly and am gonna try and figure these out. Part 1 is located here. Question 5: What is the next wave of hard-to-replicate physical assets? Alibaba is a competitive fortress. This comes from multiple factors like […]
Singles’ Day 2019 is almost here. Gonna be awesome. I’m currently packing up to head to Hangzhou. This will be my third year with the Alibaba “global influencers” group, which is just a great time behind the scenes with management. And it’s a nice reminder that I am no longer the obscure professor / failed […]
The US government claims Huawei is tied to the Chinese government. Huawei says it is a private company, overwhelmingly owned by its employees. And the international press is having lots of fun digging into the legalese of Huawei’s organizational structures. My take is pretty simple. It doesn’t really matter who owns Huawei. What matters is: […]
On my visit to Huawei HQ, I visited the room where they keep all the records for the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). And the staff gave me a nice PowerPoint presentation with lots of org charts and legal structures (see below). But I don’t really understand these. And I wasn’t really paying that much […]
President Trump’s placement of Huawei on the US entity list was a body blow. The magnitude of the hit should not be understated. Being cut off from US technology so suddenly staggered the multinational. But, to their credit, Huawei didn’t go down. They took the hit and stayed on their feet. I’m not really sure […]
This is Part 2 of my 9 take-aways from Nina Xiang’s book Red AI. Part 1 is located here. #4: China is great in electric vehicles but the US is leading in autonomous vehicles. China has lots of great companies doing electric vehicles. And they are the largest market for them (and growing). But autonomous […]
I was pretty disappointed by Kai Fu Li’s book AI Superpowers. He is a big expert on artificial intelligence in China but the book was mostly high-level US-China commentary and his personal life. It was surprisingly light on artificial intelligence. In contrast, I was pleasantly surprised by Nina Xiang’s book Red AI. While not a […]
Ok. My last take-away from my visit to Huawei HQ. Thanks if you’ve hung in this long. Take-Away #5: Huawei Is Digging In for a Long-Fight. And They Are Probably Going to Win. Chairman Liang Hua ended the press conference by saying they are both “fighting for survival” and “seeking growth”. That is a pretty […]