On Leadership: Meet Alibaba's Jack Ma

Roughly 10 years ago a publicist arranged for a Chinese entrepreneur to come to the New York offices of the business magazine where I worked at the time. Expecting the standard PR routine I was hardly prepared for the charismatic yet impish figure who sat before me explaining how he started the company in his apartment and spouting wildly aggressive goals for beating eBay in China . There was so much energy so much ambition so much fire inside this scrappy little man it was hard to know quite wh...