Engine of ingenuity

[Photo provided to China Daily]

"For example, they let buyers and sellers chat with each other through the chatting tool Wangwang. They understand that people want to do business in a human way. Ebay missed the point, they actually took the local website and connected it to the US. They actually de-localized it."

Erisman says one reason that the partnership with Yahoo failed is that "Ma didn't have a good understanding of technology. He was great at creating an e-commerce revolution.

"But a search engine is different from an e-commerce platform. E-commerce is about services but a search engine is about technology," he says.

"I think he probably learned from it," he says. "That's why Alibaba focuses so much on technology and business."

But in general, he says, Ma is successful because he is curious, dreams big and he is good at leadership. He also notes that Ma, who started his career as an English teacher, measures his value not simply by the money he makes, but his impact on society. In the beginning, no one－including Ma－imagined that he could be a CEO of a big Internet company, but today he is chairman of the largest e-commerce company in the world.

"The only limits we have are in our minds," Erisman says.

At the end of the book, 40 lessons are listed for entrepreneurs.

"I think the most important lesson for me is to never underestimate yourself," Erisman says.