Chapter 13 Model reflection: How will the big platform break through in the future?

The occurrence of these two incidents actually illustrates a problem.That is, when the number of Taobao users reaches a certain scale—the 8 million Taobao users are equivalent to the total population of Switzerland.When people from almost one country conduct transactions on a commercial platform, as the manager of the commercial platform, how to coordinate the relationship with the "business people"? It can be seen from these two conflicting incidents that Taobao has lacked such management experience for a long time. As mentioned earlier, Jack Ma said that the business model he admires most is the national model.In fact, in 2011 and 2012, Taobao was already very much like a "country" - the relationship between Alibaba Group and these merchants who settled in Taobao is actually a community of interests, but there are rulers and ruled Relationship.It can be said that it is very similar to the national model.

So, in such a country-like business model consisting of 8 million sellers and hundreds of millions of buyers, as a ruler and manager, when he wants to propose a new system, how should he communicate with these buyers and sellers? , is actually a very important proposition. Reflecting on Taobao’s management model, we must raise two points: First, when a system is introduced, is there a mechanism for democratic consultation?Specifically, did Taobao release information in advance, and did it establish a mechanism to negotiate with users when it proposed the project of "recruiting wealth and wealth" in 2006 and new rules in 2011?If not, then the sudden release of the system will inevitably cause riots.

Second, how to carry out democratic consultation.In Western developed countries, there is a system called representative system, and China's people's congress system and political consultation system are also representative systems.When there is no way to negotiate with these 8 million Taobao merchants at the same time, some Taobao merchants can be selected from the 8 million merchants as representatives. These Taobao representatives need to form an independent organization. According to Western political terms, it can be called It is the trade union of Taobao merchants.The Taobao Merchant Trade Union represents 8 million Taobao merchants, and they negotiate with Alibaba, the manager.

Therefore, the establishment of a democratic consultation mechanism and the introduction of a representative system are actually what Taobao must consider for its future development.This is also the part that Alibaba has lacked in system design in the past few years. Alibaba once proposed to establish a new commercial civilization in China, which was mentioned by Jack Ma and his "Chief of Staff" Zeng Ming many times in business speeches in the past few years.So, what is the new commercial civilization established by Alibaba?They proposed eight words called "openness, transparency, sharing and responsibility".These eight characters can be said to be the ideological foundation on which a business world or a civilized world can be established.

So, how can we make Taobao an open model, how can we establish a transparent system, how can we share benefits, and how can we assume our respective responsibilities?This is a question that Taobao and its merchants need to think about together in the next few years. The construction of any commercial civilization is, in the final analysis, the construction of a democratic system.