Richest man

Chapter 31 Asia: Lee Kun-hee (2)
In the face of achievements, Li Jianxi showed his usual style again. He just calmly drew a new blueprint for Samsung's next ten years: the turnover in 2010 will reach 2247 billion US dollars, and Samsung's brand value will increase to 700 billion. U.S. dollar rose to No. [-] in the world rankings.Because in Li Jianxi's heart, only becoming "the most respected company in the world" is Samsung's highest goal.

In 2004, Samsung Electronics took the lead in realizing Li Kunxi's wish.In the electronic industry ranking list of the world's most respected companies in 2004 published by "Fortune" magazine, Samsung ranked fourth, with a brand value of 108 billion U.S. dollars, a revenue of 2003 billion U.S. dollars in fiscal year 362.8, and seven products with market share The rate has reached the first in the world, and it will continue to maintain its leading position in the digital field with cutting-edge products and technologies.

The "war" between Samsung Electronics and Sony

On April 2002, 4, the stock market value of Samsung Electronics surpassed Sony for the first time, with a total of 2 trillion won, more than 65.6 trillion won higher than Sony. This became the biggest news in the electronics industry that year.Even if you look at history, such a moment will become a bright spot-because before that, the whole world believed that it was quite difficult to surpass Japanese companies, and to surpass Sony, which is considered "the pride of Japan" by the Japanese, It is an impossible task.

But Samsung did.

Many people say that Samsung is "green out of blue and better than blue", because Samsung's initial "birth" was the result of a marriage with Japan's Sanyo Corporation (1969) (the same example is that South Korea's Pohang Steel surpassed Japan after learning Japanese technology New Steel Corporation, which has become the largest steel company in the world).At that time, Samsung lacked technology and had to choose to cooperate with technologically advanced Japanese companies. During most of the 20s, Samsung had been learning from Sanyo Electronics in the production of transistors, radios and televisions.However, after decades of development, Samsung has become a leader in the industry, and its research and development capabilities are already above most Japanese companies.An interesting thing is: on April 70, 2002, Samsung Electronics' branch in Japan, "Samsung Japan", welcomed the president of Sanyo Electric, Toshi Iue. 4 years ago, his father, Toshio Iue, the founder of Sanyo Electric, taught Samsung the technology to produce 22-inch black and white TVs in the form of OEM; but now, Jing Zhimin visits Samsung and wants to know But why Samsung can beat Sony.

This is a doomed war.Maybe it came about by accident, but once it appears, it becomes an unchangeable mission, because for Samsung, if it does not have the ambition to dominate the world, it will be extremely difficult to even survive in the highly competitive electronics industry, let alone It can't be said that it surpasses and breaks through.The reason is like if you set a passing goal in advance, the result will be that you will not even reach the passing grade.

This feeling reached its climax during a trip to the United States after Li Jianxi took over Samsung.At that time, Samsung had made considerable achievements in South Korea, and was already well-known in East Asia and some regions. Under such circumstances, Lee Kun-hee, who was the chairman of Samsung at the time, went to the United States for inspection, but found that Samsung was in an extremely embarrassing situation in the United States. —has no place at all.After returning to China, Li Jianxi thought about it repeatedly, and he decided to let all Samsung employees realize the international status of Samsung products.So Li Jianxi led the executives of the group to visit Los Angeles, USA.

The situation was tragic: At that time, Samsung products were very cheap in the US market, but the price advantage could not impress the hearts of customers at all, and there were very few people who stopped or even paid attention to Samsung seriously.However, Sony and other world-famous products have confirmed people’s consumer psychology of buying expensive and not cheap, and buying up and not buying down. Although the price is much higher than Samsung’s products, buyers are flocking to them—Samsung’s products in the United States are at best second-rate products. , This is a strong and huge stimulus for Samsung executives.Li Jianxi gave each executive US$1000 to buy the most popular electronic products at that time, take them back and compare them carefully, and find out the gap between Samsung.

After a careful comparative study, more intense discussions took place within Samsung, but in the end it came down to a common voice: Samsung must face up to the competition with the strong, vigorously develop core technologies, and improve the company's product research and development capabilities.In Li Jianxi's heart, he has a blueprint for Samsung's development: that is to continuously improve the competitiveness of the company's products through the development of new products, thereby completely changing Samsung's image in the minds of consumers.This strategy of Samsung can also be seen in many Chinese companies: a group of Chinese home appliance companies such as Haier and TCL have adopted this development strategy.

After determining the development direction, Samsung and Sony competed fiercely in various fields, and finally completely surpassed Sony in the fields of electronic memory chips, mobile phones, monitors, and video recorders, and became the world's leader in similar products.For example, Samsung is now the world's largest manufacturer of memory chips; its mobile phone production and sales capacity has surpassed that of the famous Motorola, and it is the second largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world after Nokia. This performance is far beyond Sony's comparison.

And Sony has obviously felt the tremendous pressure brought by Samsung. It has tried to reduce the threat of Samsung through a series of methods. The more interesting one is this example: Not long ago, one of Sony’s series companies-Columbia Films’ film "Spider-Man" officially released.In the film, the Samsung Electronics advertisement in the Times Square building in the United States was replaced by the "USA Today" advertisement.This building appeared three times in the film. The advertisements of other companies were not specially arranged, but Samsung's advertisements were specially replaced.Not only that, but in the TV commercials promoted by the film, Samsung Electronics' commercials are also transformed into other companies' mobile phone commercials-these are almost the most subtle things a company can think of, but they have far-reaching significance for Sony.

Of course, the war between Samsung Electronics and Sony may continue to spread without end...

Samsung "Three Fires"

Samsung, which has gone through fire, has now become the most famous group in South Korea, and the management methods of Lee Kun-hee, who is good at contemplation and committed to pursuing the state of "stuck" are also being studied and learned by many companies.But in fact, it is extremely difficult to really understand how a company or an outstanding entrepreneur operates, just like an iceberg always exposes a small part of the sea, but most of it is hidden under the water.If you want to truly understand Samsung and understand Samsung's culture, you can only do it after being in it and feeling it personally.

However, Samsung's long development history is also showing the world a wonderful picture scroll, and people can always find the most wonderful finishing touch after looking at the picture scroll.The following are generally accepted ways of doing business at Samsung:
Technology leader

Li Jianxi's taking over is a watershed in the history of Samsung's development.

After he took over, Samsung put forward for the first time a development path with the goal of "leading technology", which has always been recognized as Samsung's success.

Li Jianxi said: "Samsung is today, I think it is because of the backing of technology. Although today we are co-developing technology and co-marketing with world-class companies, but in the early days, let alone technical guidance, even spending money to buy technology It was not easy. In addition, Korean operators at that time always thought that technical workers were just craftsmen and didn’t pay much attention to them. I had to stand up and sincerely express my sincere gratitude to Japanese or American technical workers Ask for advice bit by bit. Fortunately, I have been curious about new things since I was a child and like to get to the bottom of it, so I have been looking forward to hearing about new technologies and good technologies. Whenever I have time, I will go to advanced countries to learn and learn from them. The technicians ask for advice, and then pass it on to our technicians."

By learning technology, Samsung has the foundation of survival.But in order to make the enterprise develop better, it needs higher wisdom. Therefore, Li Jianxi actively advocates that after learning, he will independently develop his own technology and create the core technical strength of the enterprise.Li Jianxi said: In the 21st century, if technological capabilities cannot be self-reliant, enterprises cannot survive.Therefore, he decided to increase at least 1.1% every year on the basis of the original 3 trillion won research and development funds.Through technological innovation, Samsung has achieved great results.Today, South Korea ranks seventh in the world's patent filing list, most of which are filed by Samsung.Samsung is also one of the top ten companies with the most patents in the world.

Use only
Regarding the principle of competition, Li Jianxi, who is familiar with the way of management, naturally understands a truth: the competition of technology is also the competition of talents.Therefore, since 1993, Samsung has paid great attention to the cultivation and training of talents, especially the cultivation of senior knowledge talents.

Li Jianxi has a famous saying: "A genius can support 10 to 20 people." This shows that he knows the importance of talents.And since he took office, he has been constantly thinking about: what development will depend on in 5 to 10 years, what preparations should be made early for the future, and what Samsung needs if it wants to go global quickly. Set up technology research and development bases in various fields, so as to recruit outstanding talents regardless of nationality and field.Korean writer Hong Xiaxiang described it in his biography of Li Jianxi: Samsung employs the best of the elite, and the report submitted by the company’s investigation department to Li Jianxi is not inferior to the president’s report.It can be seen from this.

In terms of technology, he attaches great importance to the cultivation of talents, and in terms of operation, Li Jianxi also pays attention to the selection criteria of talents.

Samsung is one of the earliest companies to use the professional manager system among Korean family businesses.Li Jianxi also has a set of criteria for selecting a CEO.He believes that as a manager of an enterprise, he must have five characteristics of "knowledge, action, use, training, and evaluation": "knowledge" is to have a good understanding of the concept of "career" of one's work, basic technology, necessary talents and careers The core strength of the core strength; line, is not limited to knowledge, take the lead in demonstrating what you know, and constantly put it into action; use, is to know how to assign work to subordinates; training, is to know how to guide subordinates; evaluation, is to know how to Appropriately evaluate the final result.

In terms of employment strategy, Li Jianxi likes a Chinese saying the most: "Do not use people who are suspicious, and do not doubt people when you are employed." He once said confidently: "Samsung's CEO's ability or qualification is better than that of any advanced company's CEO. Excellent. So I just put forward the general direction of management such as future strategies, as for general management, the general manager with professional capabilities of each company will automatically complete it.” Samsung’s current CEO Yoon Jong-yong is an excellent talent born under such circumstances.

Strong man with broken wrist
The amazing thing about Li Jianxi is that he has the courage to give up at critical moments, and this is also one of the qualities that an excellent leader should possess.

He said: "Every time I make structural adjustments, it is like digging out the flesh from my own body. It is very painful. However, in order to cope with the constantly changing external environment and improve competitiveness, I have to continue to adjust the organization. .” The most outstanding example here is the example of giving up Samsung Motors mentioned above.The automobile industry has always been one of Li Kunxi's favorite industries. Therefore, before the 1997 financial crisis, Samsung Group invested hundreds of millions of dollars to establish Samsung Motors Corporation. , Samsung Motors suffered serious losses, and in the end, Li Kunxi had to sell it to Renault of France.But at the same time, the news of the investment failure had an extremely negative impact on the Samsung Group, and public opinion also degraded him.In order to recover the losses, Lee Kun-hee personally provided 1997 billion won to bear the responsibility for the failure of investment in automobile production, and sold 8000 million US dollars of assets to establish a fund to improve the group's capital turnover, and also used 90% of his personal income to improve employee benefits and financial conditions... …All of these things, what else is it if it’s not the courage of a “strong man breaking his wrist”
Where are the three generations of Samsung going?

Li Jianxi, who has one son and three daughters under his knees, now lives in the secluded Chengzhi Garden in Hannan-dong for a long time, and still often falls into long contemplation, like a reclusive master.People have no way of knowing every detail and moment of his thinking, but it seems to be evident from every decision he made on Samsung.It is said that because of his unique physique, he often works at night, and sometimes he can last a day by eating only three or four sushi, and sometimes he does not sleep for 48 hours because of meditation...

What is Lee Kun Hee thinking?
This is an intriguing question. Perhaps he is thinking about how to keep up with the most global knowhow companies in various fields: how to learn technology from Sony and Panasonic, how to learn inventory management from Westinghouse, how to learn customer service from Nordstrom department store in Seattle, how to learn from The Swiss Vacheron Constantin hand-made watches learns the commitment to customers, learns production operation management from Hewlett-Packard, learns marketing from Microsoft, and learns new product development from 3M... Maybe he is thinking about some issues that have nothing to do with Samsung: it is said that he loves dogs, so he can It is said that dogs have studied teeth; he also studies golf, and even knows about golf grass, which no one can match...

Whether he is really thinking about these questions or not, there is one question that he must think about.Now 63 years old, he once said that by the age of 65, he will definitely retire from Samsung, which also means that there are still two years before he will make plans for the future of Samsung.

As a family business, Samsung has developed to the second generation, and there will be third and fourth generations after him... But Samsung has far surpassed the significance of ordinary family businesses to Korea. As a benchmark company, every change of Samsung will attract people's great attention.At this moment, people are very concerned about a question: who will take over Samsung after Lee Kun-hee, and whether his only son, Lee Jae-yong, can inherit the huge wealth he left behind and fill the appalling power vacuum

This is also an unavoidable problem for every family business!Progress must begin somewhere, only then can society move forward.

(End of this chapter)