There may be no hotter company on the planet than Xiaomi. In less than a decade, the company has gone from being a Chinese start-up to a global player in the smartphone market. Driven by the philosophy of 'Innovation for all', Xiaomi has a cult fan following; after all, it offers high-end features at relatively low prices.Besides, it does not only sell phones. It also sells earphones, bluetooth speakers, televisions, fitness bands, weighing scales, power banks and air purifiers, am...

There may be no hotter company on the planet than Xiaomi. In less than a decade, the company has gone from being a Chinese start-up to a global player in the smartphone market. Driven by the philosophy of 'Innovation for all', Xiaomi has a cult fan following; after all, it offers high-end features at relatively low prices.Besides, it does not only sell phones. It also sells earphones, bluetooth speakers, televisions, fitness bands, weighing scales, power banks and air purifiers, am...

"The story of Alibaba's rise—along with Jack Ma's—offers a fascinating window onto China's staggering transformation." — The Wall Street JournalIn just a decade and half Jack Ma, a man who rose from humble beginnings and started his career as an English teacher, founded and built Alibaba into the second largest Internet company in the world. The company's $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the world's largest, valuing the company more than Facebook or Coca Cola. A...

**Foreword by Bill GatesLinkedIn cofounder, legendary investor, and host of the award-winning Masters of Scale podcast reveals the secret to starting and scaling massively valuable companies.**What entrepreneur or founder doesn’t aspire to build the next Amazon, Facebook, or Airbnb? Yet those who actually manage to do so are exceedingly rare. So what separates the startups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants?The s...

A different kind of matchmaker.Many of the most dynamic public companies, from Alibaba to Facebook to Visa, and the most valuable start-ups, such as Airbnb and Uber, are matchmakers that connect one group of customers with another group of customers. Economists call matchmakers multisided platforms because they provide physical or virtual platforms for multiple groups to get together. Dating sites connect people with potential matches, for example, and rid...

A trio of experts on high-tech business strategy and innovation reveal the principles that have made platform businesses the most valuable firms in the world and the first trillion-dollar companies.Managers and entrepreneurs in the digital era must learn to master digital competition and live in two worlds—the conventional economy and the platform economy. Platforms that operate for business purposes usually exist at the level of an industry or ecosystem, bringing together individu...

A guide to platform businesses that shows how they work, how to replicate the success of some of history's best platforms, and how to handle disruption."[A] stimulating book . . . The authors are particularly interesting on how modern platform companies are able to outsource much of their innovation." — The Financial Times" Modern Monopolies brilliantly lays out the formula for how to get rich in the platform economy...

International Communications Strategy is about the cross-cultural challenges currently facing PR practitioners. Offshoring, globalisation and the rise of China and India have been triggering unprecedented change in the communication sector.New channels of global communications are also being opened up by social media tools, bringing different cultures across the world together instantaneously online. Understanding cross-cultural aspects of PR includes understanding the cul...

Doing business in China is tougher than you think. Not only is the culture vastly different, but Chinas experience in manufacturing is still developing. It will be a few years before the majority of manufacturers are up to world standards. In the meantime, quality, contract laws, schedules and logistics must be closely monitored. As a result, the things Westerners must do to be successful are far different from dealing with American or European manufacturers. The best way to quickly come up t...

The explosion of blogs, social networking sites, wikis, video sharing sites, and other powerful digital communications platforms may be the biggest game-changer to impact business since mechanized manufacturing. In today’s Web 2.0 world, company stakeholders--including employees, customers, and investors--are empowered in ways unimaginable just a few years ago, and traditional corporate hierarchies are yesterday’s news.Rather than attempt to turn back the clock and reassert strict,...

Can the world’s biggest economy actually innovate? Clay Shirky explores China at a crossroads.Smartphones have to be made someplace, and that place is China. In just five years, a company named Xiaomi (which means “little rice” in Mandarin) has grown into the most valuable startup ever, becoming the third largest vendor of smartphones, behind only Samsung and Apple. China is now both the world’s largest producer and consumer of a little device that brings the entir...

An insightful, practical guide to e-commerce in emerging markets--and how to profit from their explosive boom.From China to India to Nigeria, e-commerce is entering a golden era in countries that were long left out of the e-commerce gold rush experienced in the West. If the story of the first twenty years of e-commerce's growth was set in developed markets, the story of the next twenty years will be set in emerging ones. The rise of e-commerce in emerging markets is being driven by ...