At a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of Lotte Group’s founding at the Lotte Hotel World in Songpa-gu, Seoul, on April 3, Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin took the podium amid a rousing ovation from 800 executives and staff members. He opened his speech with spirit, “I’m very thrilled with being together with you at this historic moment.”
“We’re standing at watersheds for new growth, and we’ll devote ourselves to exploring new business opportunities through innovation going beyond our imaginations and nurturing a competitive edge,” he said. “We’ll never forget the fact that demand for corporate social responsibility and roles is mounting,” Chairman Shin said. He stressed the creation of common values and a transparent management structure to gain trust from customers and related stakeholders.
When the anniversary event coinciding with the opening of the 123-storey Lotte World Tower, dubbed “Lotte’s Dream,” Chairman Shin unveiled the group’s new vision “Lifetime Value Creator.” The vision may be construed as the group’s determination to offer customers of all generations ranging from children and the elderly with reliable, exciting products and services with differentiation strategies. The new vision unveiled by Chairman Shin is a detailed version of a plan to innovate management, announced by him last October.
The latest vision calls for a shift to qualitative growth suiting society and industry ecosystem, social contributions and the building of a foundation for shared growth, departing from his father, founder Chairman Shin Kyuk-ho’s quantitative growth paradigm. It means that the group will focus on values, not numbers. The junior Shin’s new vision may be construed as the firing of a salvo to end the senior Shin’s era and herald the arrival of the junior Shin’s era, business sources said.
Lotte Group Braces for Changes, Innovation to Cope with 4th Industrial Revolution
Lotte Business Group, celebrating its 50th anniversary on April 3, has set 2017 as the first year of change and innovation to cope with the 4th Industrial Revolution.
In his New Year’s message on Jan. 2, Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin called for dramatic innovation and changes in the organization in order to overcome uncertainties. In this context, the business group has a strategy to aggressively explore new business opportunities that can create future value to brace for the advent of the 4th Industrial revolution based on ICT technologies, including artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Lotte Group plans to offer services tailored to meet customers’ needs, reliable product information and experts’ suggestions by making the most of big data and A.I. technologies.
To this end, the group has decided to introduce IBM Watson to demonstrate artificial intelligence services tailored to meet customers’ needs. The AI themes Lotte and IBM will work on by making the most of Watson are an intelligent “shopping adviser,” and an intelligent decision-making support platform. Lotte Data Communication Co. will be charged with building a system for the operation of the A.I.-based platform, while Lotte Members will be responsible for data analysis. The group-wide integrated IT service, to be built within five years, will cover all businesses. Each distribution subsidiary of the group is reinforcing diverse services to build omnichannel networks.
In particular, the group is accelerating efforts to strengthen its presence abroad. Lotte Group has decided to establish a joint venture with Salim Group, one of Indonesia’s largest business groups, to enter the Indonesian e-Commerce market. In an effort to differentiate itself from its rivals, the joint venture will build omni-channel networks combining off-line capabilities of both groups, including Lotte Group’s 41 mart outlets and department store and 11,000 convenience store Indomaret outlets of Salim group, and realize logistics service.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary, the group is had been preparing to hold a grand opening of Lotte World Tower. The completion comes about 30 years after a business site was designated. The tower is expected to establish itself as one of the nation’s landmarks, as well as the nation’s tallest building. The project has been pushed by overcoming numerous hardships over 30 years since 1987 when a site of the tower was designated.
In total, 5 million people were mobilized until dedication since November 2010 when the project broke ground. It took six years and three months or 2,280 days to dedicate the tower. The Lotte World Tower is a multi-purpose mega-project comprising the Lotte World Mall that opened in October 2014.
