How Meg Whitman Scaled Up eBay in the China Market

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In public statements, Meg Whitman is just very optimistic. China is eBay's to lose. And there isn't really competition inside. One of the really interesting dynamics that we end up talking in the class is if the entrant goes after near customers. That's not something you easily see in your own data. You don't realize that someone else is catching up on you because to someone else is actually not exactly catering to the people you serve to begin with.

In an era driven by network effects, smaller players struggle to compete against bigger platforms. The trick to gaining ground on a much larger rival, says Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, is choosing a strategy that can’t easily be imitated. A good example is TaoBao’s strategy for displacing eBay in China, back in 2007.