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Product cover image for Alibaba’s DingTalk: Designing a Digital Platform

Alibaba’s DingTalk: Designing a Digital Platform

Yuan Sun, Xiaorong Wen, Ning Su

Product #:W29957
Supplier:CEMS Collection
Discipline:Information Systems, Strategy
Setting:2022
Details:Case (PDF) • 10 pages • 2023-02-22 (Rev: 2026-04-30)

Subjects:

Technology and analyticsInformation systemsStrategy

Industries:

Information technology and telecom sector
Your Price:$8.74

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DingTalk was a digital platform launched by multinational technology conglomerate Alibaba Group Holding Limited. The predecessor of DingTalk, Laiwang, was initially intended to compete with social networking apps such as Tencent Holdings Limited’s popular WeChat. Laiwang failed to take off, so Alibaba quickly and agilely pivoted, steering DingTalk’s strategy to focus on business users instead of consumers. The vision for DingTalk became a digital platform for facilitating the transformation of both small- and-medium sized enterprises and a digital operating system for large corporations. However, in a climate of constantly-evolving business and social environments and needs, DingTalk’s design and strategies needed to evolve as well. What strategy should DingTalk pursue for its future growth and evolution?

Learning Objectives

This case is suitable for undergraduate- and graduate-level courses on information systems, strategic management, design and innovation, entrepreneurship, organizational behaviour, business and society, and sustainability. This case will allow students to learn about how DingTalk pioneered a unique approach in addressing saturation in the social platforms field and discuss the key to DingTalk platform’s success, its core competitive advantages, and its digital strategies. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will understand the following:
  • The emergence of a digital platform.
  • Difficulties and solutions in the evolution of a digital platform.
  • Different digital platforms’ strategies and competitive advantages.
  • A digital platform’s opportunities, challenges, and societal impacts.
  • The options for a digital platform’s future evolution.
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Case Study: Alibaba’s DingTalk: Designing a Digital Platform (English version) | Ivey Publishing