Management practices of Russian companie

57On the fi rst working day of 2020 Ilya Shirokov was waiting for the beginning of a strategic session, which was called to solve the problems faced by his company JOOM, an international online platform for electronic trading. The fi rst reports about the coronavirus pandemic and the risk of closing Chinese factories dur-ing the national New Year holiday were a threat to the successful startup, which by early 2020 had already over 200 mil-lion customers. Ilya and his colleagues understood that it was necessary to take urgent measures to maintain the com-pany’s competitiveness. JOOM Logistics Executive Director, Dmitry Chernyshev was confi dent that if JOOM manages to realize its competitive advantage (reliabil-ity of supply) in 2019 by reducing the time of delivery of goods from China to Russia from 3 months to 2 weeks, the company would be able to cope with the impend-ing situation in a highly competitive mar-ket. However Ilya was convinced that the increasing uncertainty of the future may require brighter decisions and smarter solutions from an ambitious startup. MY DREAM IS TO MAKE ONE OF THE BIGGEST INTERNET-BASED COMPANIES IN THE WORLD In 2005, after graduating from the Fac-ulty of Mechanics and Mathematics in Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Faculty of Finance in the New Economic School and receiving Ph.D. in Technical Science, Ilya Shirokov got into the Internet business by chance. He was a project developer of a number of outstanding Russian Internet projects, including the largest social network of that time Odnoklassniki, which had 25 mln users in 2008. In 2007–2009, he studied at Stanford University’s MBA programme and simultaneously had an internship at Warburg Pincus, a British private equity fund. In 2010 he was invited to manage the project Odnoklassniki in Mail.ru. He ensured 15-fold revenue growth for this network after two years. After that, Shi-rokov gained reputation as one of the strongest and the most famous Internet managers in Rus...