Samsung to Launch Team to Find New Engines
By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
Samsung Group said Friday that it is gathering its top brains from subsidiaries to form a team dedicated to finding new long-term business alternatives.
The launching of the 10-strong taskforce is the latest action in the group's reform drive, after reshuffling management and slimming down organizations in Samsung Electronics and other core companies. It is also an effort for sustainable growth, as its semiconductor business has been showing symptoms of sluggishness from earlier this year.
Lim Hyung-kyu, CEO of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, will head the conglomerate-level team. It will consist of three executives and six to seven high-level managers from member firms, the group's strategic planning office said. The detailed mission and scope of their activities will be decided later this month but they will transcend the organizational barriers within the group, it said.
``The taskforce will find `blue ocean' businesses that haven't been tapped by our companies. It will look into long-term growth engines that CEOs of individual companies were not able to make important decisions about,'' the strategic planning office said in a statement.
It has been reported that Samsung and its chairman Lee Kun-hee are vigorously looking for new business areas that can be a cash cow for the next 10 to 20 years, just like its bold investment in the semiconductors field in 1980s' raised the company from a local maker of cheap TVs into a global high-tech giant.
Mobile phones, liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), container ships and insurance sales are other bread-and-butter businesses for Samsung Group. But Lee and his close aides have often mentioned in public that Samsung, as well as the Korean economy, must turn their eyes to new opportunities in order to maintain rapid growth into the future.
Renewable energy has been often considered as a likely option for Samsung's next move. Last month, Choi Chi-hoon, former executive of General Electric's energy unit, started working as a high-ranking executive at Samsung Electronics. Samsung Everland and Samsung Corp. are also making significant investments into solar energy.
The acquisition of foreign firms is also believed to be part of the taskforce's mission. The statement from the strategic planning office said that the team's third role is to reinforce the group's overseas businesses, though it did not elaborate further.