SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and SK Telecom President Park Jung-ho take the stage as they participated in a town hall business meeting with SK Telecom executives and staff at SK Telecom headquarters in Euljiro, downtown Seoul, on May 30. (Photo: SK Telecom)

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won hosted a town hall business meeting with SK Telecom executives and staff, including SK Telecom President Park Jung-ho and SK ICT family companies, where they discussed AI and 5G strategies at SK Telecom headquarters in Euljiro, downtown Seoul, on May 30.

Chairman Chey had free-style discussions on the overall new ICT issues such as AI/5G service innovation, big data and digitalization for about two hours.

Roughly 300 executives and staff of SK ICT family companies participated in question & answer sessions in a free and earnest fashion. Five SK Telecom executives in charge of AI/5G sectors were present.

The latest town hall business meeting was designed to expand consensus on how to explore the future direction of AI and 5G, which are expected to spur future changes. It is the first time that Chairman Chey had communicated with CEOs and other executives on pending management issues and future strategies.

First, Chairman Chey said, “SK Telecom’s commercialization history of CDMA for the first time in the world was a big challenging attempt to change analog into digital.”

All companies faced with new challenges in an era of AI/5G, he said, adding that efforts need to be made to meet customers’ expectations through “small start,” which is designed to stack successful experiences and capabilities even if they are small at an initial stage.

Chey urged corporate members to purse deep change by arming themselves with a “crisis” mindset, saying that sticking to the conventional methods would no longer guarantee success. He called for SK ICT family members’ differentiation strategies to take advantage of their strong points rather than following major global business leaders’ ways of working.

The important viewpoint of AI-enabled personal services is customer-oriented innovation, not based on the viewpoint of suppliers, Chairman Chey said. In the case of AI, building reliability with customers has to be a foremost priority even though releasing products and technology development themselves are important, he added.

SK Telecom President Park said, “In an era in which huge amounts of data are produced like the present, solutions customers want have to be proposed even in areas that go unrecognized by them.” He stressed the need for expanding services using AI and data.

As global corporate players are accelerating efforts to make a raid into the Korean market, he said executives need to spearhead innovation of SK Telecom and the Korean ICT ecosystem by arming themselves with awareness toward a crisis through the town hall business meeting.

He also emphasized the significance of collaboration with diverse partners, saying that a business operation cannot be all things, and it is important to build an ecosystem in which good cooperative partners and users are freely allowed to join forces and evolve their services. He noted that creating a win-win playing field among business partners and users is a means of expanding customers’ happiness SK pursues.

Last but not least, Chairman Chey said, “An era of rapid change is not only a good opportunity for use, but also a threatening factor, and we do not have much time and we have to go for a foremost company beyond the conventional telecom service provider based on 5G and AI.”

Under the stewardship of SK Telecom President Park, who took office in 2017, SK Telecom is gearing itself up to rise to a new ICT company embracing not only telecommunications, but also AI, media, security and commerce. SK Telecom is expected to step on the gas on these changes and innovation in accordance with SK Chairman Chey’s call for SK Telecom’s dramatic challenge in the town hall business meeting.