Firms must embrace digital disruption

ALIBABA'S chairman Jack Ma, in a speech to entrepreneurs earlier this year, extolled the virtue of business agility and adaptability in today's fast-changing markets and highlighted several trends revolving around technology that would impact businesses of the future: from leveraging big data and cloud computing as core tenets in the age of creation to always embracing new digital technology to stay ahead.

Mr Ma cited Hong Kong as an example of a city-state that can capitalise on technology to remain competitive. "Hong Kong needs to use its IT infrastructure well. In the past, the city relied on real estate. But in 20 years, if the city still relies on real estate, then it isn't real estate's fault - it's because young people haven't taken action to change that by first changing themselves," he said.

Mr Ma - who takes his inspiration from successful tech contemporaries like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jerry Yang - is no stranger to embracing digital disruption to create new business models, being China's most successful Internet entrepreneur.