-- Herein Lies the Dream of Korea Machinery Industry

01. You have changed the name of the Central Research Institute to the "Doosan Infracore Institute of Technology" and have announced a new vision and strategies. Could you explain the background and significance of these changes?

?he term ?echnology institute?denotes something larger than a ?esearch institute?or ?esearch center,?and it is a place that develops core new technologies as well as technologies for the future. We are the highest-ranked research organization at Doosan Infracore, and our mission is to support companywide operations. We are helping to raise overall corporate competitiveness and are providing leadership through the technology that we develop. Therefore, we decided on the name change.

I thought that our first order of business must be to establish a direction and objectives for the new Institute of Technology that coincide with the corporate vision at Doosan Infracore. We also have to unify the organization and prepare to go forward into the future. That is how our ?ive Stars?were born.

In the military, ?ive stars?is the highest rank an officer can achieve, and famous people are also referred to as ?tars.?For us, the ?tar?is a high level R&D project, something that all people can look up to like a bright star in the night sky. And I believe that we must succeed with at least five of these ?tar?projects in order to be a topnotch R&D that commands great respect. Our Five Stars were designated after a careful study of our existing technological competencies as well as the technology that we will need in the future.

We have also created a visual representation of the Institute of Technology vision, and all employees are using the visual as wallpaper on their computer screens. This prompts them to consider what they have to do personally each day to achieve shared goals.?

02. What are the reasons for moving the new Institute of Technology to the Doosan Technology Institute site at Suji, Korea? How will things be different in the future?

“We are going to greatly augment our research staff in step with our growing status as the corporate-level technology R&D institution. In the first stage, we will hire 250 more highly qualified engineers, and an additional 250 engineers will be recruited over the long term. That means we needed more space than we had at the old center, which was much too small and located far from Seoul. There were limits to the number of quality people we could attract and the degree to which we could improve the working environment.

These reasons prompted our move to the same location at Suji as the Doosan Technology Institute. Now we are in a position to expand our staff and change the organizational culture at the same time.

I believe a creative and challenging work atmosphere is vitally important in R&D. We have taken down cubicle walls and arranged work spaces in hexagonal honeycomb patterns as part of our effort to foster open-mindedness and flexibility. I am stressing to my people the need to be the very best (“star level”) in everything that they do.

I also consider employee solidarity to be a prerequisite for success. When I was CEO at a chip maker, I joined my employees?music band as the lead guitarist and won the Gold Prize at a national music festival for workers. In the same way, I am encouraging our people at the Institute of Technology to also approach their jobs with a harmonizing and challenging spirit. I see this as the starting point toward our changing the organizational culture.”

03. What is your outlook for the machinery industry and what strategies must Doosan Infracore follow in response to the changing future?

“We have clarified our vision, but the problem now is how fast we can put it into action. If we can scout many excellent people, then we can reach our goals faster. So now we are going to places where many potential people can be found and spreading the word about the vision at Doosan Infracore and the Institute of Technology.

In May, I visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University to explain our Five Stars concept to Korean students enrolled in PhD programs there. I also showed them images of the new Institute interior. They all liked what they saw and said they would like to visit. Recently, students in the Berkeley PhD program and interns at Stanford came to our new facility and were very impressed. After they return to the US, they will naturally tell their friends and acquaintances about us. I expect that we will attract a number of quality people in this way.

I plan for PhD-holders eventually to make up between 30% and 40% of our research staff at the Institute of Technology. The number will be necessary for us to be a first-rate research institution globally.

We are also aggressively pursuing cooperative ties with academic institutions. In Korea we have already begun joint projects with Seoul National University and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology and we are scheduled to do the same with some leading foreign universities from next year.

Once we secure enough of the properly qualified people, we are sure to succeed in our Five Stars initiative.”

04. What is your outlook for the machinery industry and what strategies must Doosan Infracore follow in response to the changing future?

“The history of the machinery industry already spans several centuries. Everything was mechanically based before the advent of electronics. Does this mean that electronics will replace machines? Absolutely not.

The original role of machinery remains. Only machines can perform work on behalf of human beings. However, energy and environmental protection are now issues and the world’s population is aging. To meet these changing times, we will need more electronics in our machines than we did previously. The future of machinery will be providing people with convenience through the fusion of mechanics, electronics, biotechnology and other technologies.

We need people with creative minds and dreams of the future to bring these technologies to fruition. Our success depends on how well we provide these people with the proper working environment in which to pursue this grand vision.

The Doosan Infracore Institute of Technology will conduct research with a frontier spirit, believing that we are where the dream of the Korean machinery industry is realized. I am reorganizing our creative group who enjoys taking on challenges and coming up with new ideas, guiding them to the successful achievement of the Five Stars. In the future, when people talk about the turnaround in the Korean machinery industry, I hope to be remembered as one who played a leading role in making the change happen.”