“Six hours after one of our colleagues was taken to hospital with suspected SARS, our whole company – all 600 employees – were on lock down,” recalls Savio Kwan MSc09 (1976), former COO of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.
This was 17 years ago, in 2003, when SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) – a type of coronavirus – first appeared in China before rapidly spreading to other parts of Asia and around the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), SARS affected more than two dozen countries and killed almost 800 people before it was contained.
For some businesses, particularly those in Asia, the COVID-19 pandemic is not the first time they’ve had to quickly reshape business models, change traditional working practices and rethink how they deliver value propositions.
Watch: Savio Kwan shares his experience of running Alibaba during the SARS pandemic