Richest man

Chapter 30 Asia: Lee Kun-hee (1)
——Lee Kun-hee: The "wooden chicken" of radical change In Korea, "Who is the most well-known company" is a question that hardly requires thinking. If you want to know the answer, even an ignorant child who can just talk, he can use Not yet clear articulate tell you: Samsung.

Indeed, that is the only answer to the question, at least for now.

The Samsung Group was born in 1938. After more than 60 years of careful management, its products have become the necessities of contemporary Korean life. The market value of the Samsung Group, including Samsung Electronics, Samsung Life, Samsung C&T, and Samsung Construction, is Equivalent to nearly 30% of the entire Korean stock market.Among them, Samsung Electronics is the most representative company in South Korea and even Asia. It is the company with the fastest rising brand value in the global information industry in the past five years, and once surpassed Japan's Sony Corporation to become the world's largest electronics company.

Samsung has also become a benchmark company in South Korea and the greatest pride of a highly confident nation.

It is the leader of Samsung, Li Kunxi, who created this pride.In the eyes of many, this is a charismatic person.

First of all, he is the well-deserved richest man in South Korea: According to the latest calculations, Li Jianxi currently ranks 2005nd on the 122 "Forbes" global wealth list, with nearly 5 trillion won (about 43 billion U.S. dollars) asset.

Li Jianxi is also a taciturn person, and even his expression rarely changes, so in the Korean business circle, he got the nickname "Wooden Chicken".Someone described Li Jianxi's silent character and said: "If there is lightning and thunder, others will faint on the spot, but he will walk home step by step, and he will be fainted the next morning." But at the same time, he is A vigorous and resolute person will go straight to the core of the problem once he speaks.The meetings he chaired often lasted for hours without interruption, so the staff got into the habit of going to the bathroom before the meeting.

Compared with these, Lee Kun-hee's influence on South Korea is a rare exception in modern history.For example, in China today, people have generally accepted new living habits such as "two days off a week" and "1993 to 2003". This is the result of the Chinese government's efforts to promote it.In South Korea, it was Li Kunxi who changed people's living habits.Since he started to lead Samsung's "Second Venture" in 2001, the new work system he implemented in Samsung, which starts at seven o'clock and ends at four o'clock every day, has changed the daily schedule of the entire South Korea. In [-], he took the lead in implementing The five-day working system has also become a new habit of Koreans. In [-], Lee Kun-hee was ambitious and determined to build South Korea into a "strong and small country" similar to Sweden and Finland...

The charm of Li Jianxi has become a special case in the legend of the richest man. Like Lin Shaoliang in Indonesia, Li Ka-shing in Hong Kong, Wang Yongqing in Taiwan, and even earlier Rockefeller in the United States, they have never reached his level.Therefore, Li Jianxi also has a different honor from other richest men in South Korea. He is called the "Economic President" by Koreans, while the American "Newsweek" said that he is South Korea's "behind-the-scenes emperor".

Samsung, which started selling rice

Due to historical reasons, many Asian companies started from the most primitive operations.The same is true of Lee Kun-hee's Samsung, and its start-up period was the most turbulent period in South Korea.

In 1938, Li Jianxi’s father, Li Bingzhe, opened a rice noodle processing workshop. After a long period of hard work, the small processing workshop gradually grew, and the business scope also expanded. So he began to set foot in the export of fishery products, vegetables and fruits , thereby accumulating a certain amount of capital.After experiencing the smoke and clouds of World War II, by the 50s, Li Bingzhe had already made his mark in the sugar and woolen textile industries, and then extensively participated in petrochemical, shipbuilding, aviation, electronics, communication and financial industries.By the 80s, some irrelevant commodity production departments, such as food, automobiles, and aircraft, were included in Samsung, and Samsung became the largest consortium in the Korean economic field.World-renowned companies such as General Electric, Toshiba, Panasonic, and Lockheed have established joint ventures with Samsung.

In November 1987, South Korea's "God of Entrepreneurship" Li Bingzhe passed away, and his third son Li Jianxi took over all Samsung's business.Li Jianxi received a degree in economics from the famous Waseda University in Japan in his early years, and received an MBA education at George Washington University in the United States.After inheriting the inheritance, Lee Kun-hee climbed to the top of the Korean business world in one step.However, as a generation "born with a silver spoon in his mouth", he has a completely different mind and judgment from his parents.Li Kunxi had a premonition of the potential crisis from the unprecedented downturn in the US market and the complex business of Samsung Group's subsidiaries.

In 1988, Li Jianxi, who had just taken over, presided over the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Samsung Group.This is the real beginning of a new era for Samsung.He called for a second venture to build the Samsung Group into a world-class company in the 21st century.

Li Kunxi conducted a comprehensive understanding and precise analysis of Samsung's business. He realized that although the Samsung Group has a prominent reputation in Korea, but looking at the world, Samsung lacks the core competitiveness of sustainable development, and its technical strength and talents are seriously insufficient.In people's eyes, Samsung and companies like Sony are not even peers.Li Jianxi, who has always been reticent, after several years of exploration and painful thinking, in 1993, he opened the curtain of the carefully designed "new business reform".

"New management" changes thinking
Regarding the upcoming "new management reform", Li Jianxi, who loves golf, once gave a wonderful metaphor. He said: "A person who hits the ball for 180 yards can easily hit 200 yards with the guidance of the coach. Seriously. If you practice, you can also hit 220 yards, but if you want to hit more than 250 yards, you have to correct everything from the way you hold the pole to your stance.” So, at a staff meeting, Li Jianxi told everyone The staff made an oath: I want to change everything except my wife and children.

This point of view is reflected in Li Jianxi's "new management reform", the first thing to change is thinking.

For a long time, in people's consumption concepts, whether it is machinery, automobiles or electronic products, cheapness is almost the biggest selling point of all Korean products.However, if counting world-class products in terms of quality and technical origin, Korean brands rarely have respectable honors.This is also the reason why when Lee Kun-hee took over Samsung and vowed to "new management reform", he was laughed at by many Korean colleagues-in the minds of Koreans, quantity is the pursuit of corporate existence.

However, in Lee Kun-hee's "new management" philosophy, he particularly emphasized quality management as the core of change and completely changed the "quantity-centered" blind development idea. Samsung Group, represented by Samsung Electronics, proposed a "technology-leading" concept new goal.In order to ensure the quality, Li Jianxi went to the United States and Japan to study in person, went deep into the key links of production, and almost paranoidly pursued the technological leadership of Samsung products.After changing its concept, Samsung quickly bears the fruit of victory: in 1994, Samsung Electronics produced the world's first 256-megabyte memory chip, and became the world's largest DRAM manufacturer; It has become the most fashionable pop culture.

At the same time, Samsung's talent concept has also undergone significant changes.

When pursuing technology and management rooted in technology, Li Jianxi put the cultivation of scientific and technological talents as the focus of the entire enterprise. Focus on global development goals.Today, nearly a quarter of Samsung's nearly 6 employees are R&D personnel; Samsung also operates 1 R&D centers in 4 countries around the world.

The change of Samsung's talent concept is also reflected in the selection of management talents. After the "new management reform", Li Jianxi discovered and reused a group of ordinary talents who had nothing to do with the Samsung family, but they all made great contributions to Samsung.Samsung's internal talent selection mechanism established by Li Jianxi ensures that talents can display their talents in Samsung, and for Samsung employees, they also have better incentive goals.Take Samsung Electronics as an example. Now its general manager of semiconductor department, general manager of digital media, general manager of digital appliances, general manager of mobile phone and information communication are all outstanding talents who grew up from that period. Yin Zhonglong is an outstanding talent representative since Samsung's "new management reform".

However, although the "new business reform" has achieved important success in the reform of talent management, product design and production, process control and other aspects, in the first few years, Li Jianxi did not make changes to Samsung's business structure.This seems to be a departure from his original oath, and the reason may have something to do with Li Jianxi's character.

Li Jianxi is a sports enthusiast. He loves and is omnipotent in wrestling, judo, equestrian, golf, table tennis and other sports, so he also adopted the same method for Samsung.

At that time, Samsung was all-encompassing, with a wide variety of businesses, involving 63 categories.Some of them are irrelevant, such as the insurance company Samsung Marine Fire Insurance Company, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, which manufactures electronic components, Samsung Corning, which manufactures TV picture tubes and glass for monitors, and the large amusement park-Samsung Everland, There's even a three-star golf course...

But as in competitive sports, being an all-around champion is often a pleasant surprise.Surprises don't always come, but what awaits the giant Samsung is a disaster.

In 1997, the Asian financial crisis broke out, and South Korea was hit hard, especially by companies that relied too much on foreign investment and technology at that time, and some companies that relied solely on the capital market to grow bigger.Daewoo, Kia and many other large companies that were as famous as Samsung in the past have fallen one after another. Li Kunxi has also experienced another experience of being reborn in the financial crisis.

When the crisis came, a large number of enterprises were paralyzed or closed down. Li Jianxi finally made up his mind to withdraw from loss-making or marginalized industries, and only retained investment fields with promising profit prospects such as electronics, finance, and services.It is extremely painful to make this decision, because these companies to be cut off are like his own sons and daughters to Li Jianxi.But at this time, Li Jianxi showed the outstanding qualities of an outstanding entrepreneur. He said to Samsung employees: "For the sake of the company, life, property, and even reputation can be abandoned." So Li Jianxi even gave up his favorite car. ——It was Samsung’s most important investment project before the financial crisis. Samsung invested hundreds of millions of dollars for it. However, due to the serious overcapacity of automobiles in South Korea at that time, Samsung Motors not only failed to bring profits to Samsung, but became a huge group. Baggage, in the end, Samsung Motors was sold to Renault of France in 1998.Li Jianxi recalled afterwards: "The crisis gave us the freedom to reorganize, and it also gave us the motivation to survive. Without dramatic changes, Samsung can only die. But apart from mobile phones, we have almost nothing to save the Samsung brand. Products. We put all our eggs in one basket and have a keener insight into market changes, making Samsung mobile phones significantly superior in technology and quality to the same generation, more fashionable, smarter, and more expensive. At the same time, we have also improved the chip business and expanded the market. We ended up amassing a decent amount of hard currency dollars, which we used to pay off our debts and get us out of the valley of death."

It's a miracle: Samsung emerged from the brink of bankruptcy after a painful "flesh-cutting" treatment.You know, at that time, Samsung’s debt reached 170 billion U.S. dollars, and after departmental restructuring and “painful” layoffs (at that time, Samsung Group laid off 8.4% of the 30 workers with the support of the South Korean government. Countries with active trade union forces were quite shocked, and Li Jianxi later called it a painful decision), Samsung Group’s debt ratio dropped from 1997% in 366 to 1999% in 166.

After resource integration, the Samsung Group began to recover in the late 2000s, emphasizing more on the development method of winning by technology and quality. The total value of listed stocks that year was almost equivalent to the sum of the market values ​​of all listed stocks of Hyundai, LG and SK.Samsung Electronics, Samsung C&T and Samsung Life in the Samsung Group have entered the ranks of the world's top 500 companies.By 2001, 4200 technicians at the Samsung Research Center in Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, and the R&D investment equivalent to 7% of annual sales, have let people see the strength of the Samsung Group, and the Samsung products on the market are becoming more and more " Noble" up, with many unique qualities.Samsung Group has also registered 1450 patents and trademarks in the United States.

When the time went to 2003, Samsung had grown into a multinational company attracting global attention, and this year was also the 2003th anniversary of Lee Kun-hee's implementation of the "new management" concept. On June 6, 5, Lee Kun-hee and the CEOs of Samsung's subsidiaries held a celebration at the Shilla Hotel in South Korea. What was placed in front of every Samsung employee was a report card made by them: in the "New Management" In the past ten years, Samsung's annual turnover has increased by 3.4 times, and its profit has increased by 28 times. In 2002, the value of Samsung’s exported goods totaled US$312 billion, accounting for 20% of South Korea’s total exports that year; its turnover reached 141 trillion won (approximately US$1190 billion at the then exchange rate), accounting for 25% of South Korea’s GDP.In the "2003 Most Respected Companies in the World in 1" published by the British "Financial Times" on January 19, 2003, Samsung Electronics ranked 50nd, and Li Jianxi was listed as "The World's Most Respected Operators". " in the 42nd place.These are unique achievements in Korean history.

(End of this chapter)