China's 'Everything Online' Company

Xiaolan Fu is Professor and Founding Director of the TMCD Centre at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and Founder of OxValue.AI. She is a winner of the 2021 Falling Walls Scientific Breakthrough Award, and author of Innovation under the Radar (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and China's Path to Innovation (Cambridge University Press, 2015). George Yip is an Emeritus Professor of Marketing and Strategy at Imperial College London and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Northeastern University, Boston. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Total Global Strategy, and co-author of China's Next Strategic Advantage (2016) and Pioneers, Hidden Champions, Changemakers, and Underdogs: Lessons from China's Innovators (2019). Xuechen Ding is Assistant Professor in Business Administration at the Beijing Technology and Business University, Postdoc at the University of Oxford, and Consultant of OxValue.AI. Her research interests are innovation strategies, digital innovation, and national innovation systems. Her recent publications appear in Management and Organization Review, and Industry and Innovation. Wei Wei is Assistant Professor in Management and Associate Fellow at the Digit Centre at the University of Sussex. Her research focuses on platform work, digital human resource management, and innovation management. Her recent publications appear in Economic and Industrial Democracy, and the Review of International Political Economy.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Tencent: a rising technology giant in China; 3. Competition and cooperation: using organisational resilience to foster innovation; 4. Serving talents through digital human resource management: motivating great creativity; 5. Flowing water for dynamism: internal mobility to boost innovation; 6. Building an open and inclusive ecosystem: WeChat's rise to a super app; 7. Developing leading products through continuous innovation: the case of QQ and Tencent docs; 8. Maximising the value of platforms: social innovation and social value creation; 9. Conclusions: Tencent's innovation model.

'This authoritative study of global tech giant Tencent's innovation models unpacks how China's 'everything online' leader succeeds. It offers a rare, in-depth glimpse into China's digital revolution triumphs and delivers actionable lessons on fostering innovation, building open ecosystems, and balancing economic and social value-making it an indispensable resource for policymakers and business leaders alike.' Justin Yifu Lin, Dean, Institute of New Structural Economics, Peking University and Former Chief Economist, the World Bank