Aquino shares ‘LQ’ conversation with Jack Ma
PRESIDENT Benigno Aquino III on Tuesday shared a conversation he had with Chinese billionaire and Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who graced the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) CEO Summit last week in Manila.
In a speech during the inauguration of Pointwest Digital Center in Pasig City, Aquino said his conversation with Ma, which he called a “really interesting guy,” lasted for over an hour and touched on a certain “LQ.”
“First thing [where] we hit it off: Like me, he is the opposite of a techie person. He said, ‘I’m not really that techie, I hire the people who know all the tech and they try to distill it enough for me to understand.’ But the bottom line is, I think he was responding to the dirt or the quality of infrastructure in China at that point in time. He had this vision that we can do this service using the net,” Aquino said.
Ma, a self-made billionaire who founded e-commerce giant Alibaba, was known for his rags-to-riches story particularly after a $21.8-billion stock debut in New York in 2014. In the CEO Summit, Ma shared how he built Alibaba with only two people knowing something about technology.
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The President said Ma noted how “LQ,” which means love quotient and not love quarrel, made Filipinos stand out from other workers in the world.
“Now the point in the conversation that I want to stress is that we talked about Q—the knowledge quotient, the intelligence quotient, and the LQ. The bottom line is, you can hire the knowledge of anyone in the world; IQ is there anywhere in the world. But he did notice that in the Philippines… LQ is love quotient,” Aquino said.
“The love quotient enables the Filipino to go really to the needs of the client that he is talking to, which is not available elsewhere. The bottom line is that’s a tip, he’s really looking seriously at us to add that LQ to the operations of Alibaba. You might want to prepare the proposal already for Mr. Jack Ma. [Laughter] I don’t think I have to encourage you as to the sheer volume of transactions and the value of transactions going through Alibaba,” he added.
Boasting of massive investments and reforms in technical education, Aquino said the government will continue being the partner of businesses and enterprises in maximizing the skills and talents of Filipinos.
“You are aware that we have just concluded the hosting of the Apec Economic Leaders Meeting last week. In our retreat session, we had an interesting discussion about technology and how it impacts our respective economies. Naturally, innovation opens many doors for us, but it is vital for any government to deal with the disruption that always accompanies innovation,” he said.
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