article thumbnail

An Insider’s Account of the Yahoo-Alibaba Deal

Harvard Business Review

The previous year the company had generated more than $4 billion in gross merchandise sales through its platform, yielding about $50 million in revenue. Wulf noted that Ma studied Jack Welch’s approach and was inspired by GE’s decentralized decision-making. Alibaba was based in the south, in Hangzhou, and had about 2,400 employees.

article thumbnail

Why Your Company Culture Should Match Your Brand

Harvard Business Review

Rarely do people point to encouraging employees to disagree with their managers, as Amazon does, or firing top performers, as Jack Welch did at GE. But in fact, it’s having a distinct corporate culture — not a copycat of another firm’s culture — that allows these great organizations to produce phenomenal results.

Brand 8