Prophets of Mass Innovation: The Gospel According to BAT

Abstract

This article examines the role that the CEOs of China's tech giants (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent [BAT]) play as advocates of China's vision of mass innovation. It seeks, first, to understand what mass innovation is and the conditions for its success and then goes on to divine how the three individuals involved-Jack Ma (Alibaba), Robin Li (Baidu), Ma Huateng (Tencent)-combine the narrative of Silicon Valley individuated cyber-libertarianism and the collectivist socialism of China to convert the grassroots over to the gospel of mass innovation. In doing so, it traces the rise and beliefs of the trio but uses primarily Jack Ma's and Alibaba's growing prominence in Southeast Asia as a case in point of BAT's influence outside of China.

“Crazy Jack” and the “Gay CEO”: Visions, Entrepreneurship, and the Chinese State in the New Digital Economy

“…However, visions are also embedded in particular technologies and pushed by other actors than the state, in particular information-technology (IT) companies and individual entrepreneurs (e.g. Leong, 2018;Miao and Chan, 2020;Plantin and de Seta, 2019;Wang, 2020a). In the literature to date, comparatively little attention has been given to the role of IT entrepreneurs as drivers and shapers of the Chinese digital society.…”

“…It has been argued that IT companies and their chief executive officers (CEOs) have a particular power and ability to embody and push technological visions, although of course there are many individuals apart from the CEOs involved in developing products and marketing visions (e.g. Fuchs, 2016;Hoffmann et al, 2018;Leong, 2018;Streeter, 2015). Many of today's IT entrepreneurs can be described as business celebrities who:…”

“…Personal Life and Company Developments Jack Ma's story is by now quite well known and has been told many times by himself in different talks and public appearances, by the media, in biographies, and in business analyses of the company and academic works (e.g. Barboza, 2014;Foroohar, 2014;Lei, 2019;Leong, 2018;Tse, 2015). The stories about Jack Ma are not only circulated in China but also abroad, as he has given many interviews with the international media and given speeches at western universities and meetings such as the World Economic Forum in Davos.…”

“…Wu and Yun, 2018) and individual entrepreneurs and platforms (e.g. Leong, 2018;Miao and Chan, 2020;Wang, 2020a;Yu, 2018), and how companies through their policies and platforms shape user behaviour (e.g. Chen et al, 2018;Jia and Han, 2020;Stockmann and Luo, 2017).…”

“…Visions in this article will be understood very broadly as the imagination, rhetoric, and expected individual and social benefits that surround or are seen as embedded in specific technologies and products and articulated by individual entrepreneurs (compare Hoffmann et al, 2018;Leong, 2018). In many ways, visions and company branding thus overlap, although internet visions go beyond narrow marketing strategies and try to put the brand/product within a larger and future-oriented socio-political and technological framework.…”