With a focus on China’s biggest internet companies, Alibaba and Tencent, the case study describes their respective histories, fintech subsidiaries and platform-based ecosystems.

When Alibaba, China’s leading digital platform and cloud-based services company, fails to acquire the US firm Moneygram, CEO Jack Ma decides to go it alone and develop a digital strategy using blockchain technology as the basis for a global remittance service, GCash, within its cloud services business.

The case describes General Electric’s transformation from an industrial manufacturer to an industrial analytics giant. It opens in 2009 when CEO Jeff Immelt decides that GE, a hardware maker, needs to be more capable in software. The narrative traces his early efforts to consolidate and coordinate software capabilities in a central unit (GE Software Center) headed by Bill Ruh in Silicon Valley.