WHEN Lee Kun-hee took the helm at Samsung just two weeks after the death of his father, the firm’s founder, in 1987, he set himself a seemingly unachievable goal: turning a middling South Korean conglomerate into a global giant in the mould of IBM or General Electric. He had a clear vision of how to climb that mountain: making big bets on emerging technologies and going for scale at almost any price. And he had the sort of management style that would have made Zeus proud. Every few years he hurled lightning bolts into the group’s headquarters in Seoul, where he would otherwise rarely show up. In 1993, for instance, he ordered all his senior managers to drop everything and fly immediately to Frankfurt, where he gave them a speech that lasted three days.
Today, nearly 30 years later, Samsung boasts annual revenues of more than $300 billion. It is now the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, with two-thirds of the group’s revenues coming from smartphones, semiconductor chips and assorted other components. The rest comes from a grab-bag of lower-tech offerings, from washing machines and container ships to theme parks and life assurance.
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from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1dmQMZX
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