Ming Zeng

Ming Zeng is currently Chairman of the Academic Council of the Alibaba Group, an e-commerce, retail, and technology company, based in Hangzhou, China. He served as Chief Strategy Officer of the company from 2006-2017. He has been working closely with Jack Ma, and played an important role in shaping the strategy of the Alibaba Group as it blossomed into a USD400 Billion company.

Zeng is also one of the most respected business thinkers globally. He is the author of Smart Business: What Alibaba’s Success Reveals about the Future of Strategy (Harvard Business Review Press, September 2018). His earlier book, co-authored with Peter Williamson, Dragons at Your Door: How Chinese Cost Innovation Is Disrupting Global Competition (Harvard Business Review Press, September 2007), is one of the first books studying the emerging global companies from China. His book, Winning by Strategy (in Chinese, Citic Publishing 2003), has become a classic on strategy, and influenced generations of entrepreneurs in China.

Zeng is the founding dean of Hupan School of Entrepreneurship, a private business school founded in 2014 by Jack Ma and other leading Chinese entrepreneurs, in Hangzhou. He was also one of the seven professors who founded Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing in 2002, the first private business school in China. Prior to that, he taught at INDEAD, France and Singapore.