Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin poses for a photo with group staff members at a cafeteria of Lotte World Tower on Jan. 7.

Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin delivered his New Year message in which he called for the company to make a sustainable future through sympathy and collaboration.

First, Chairman Shin urged his executives and staffers to make efforts so that better values can be offered through continuously sympathizing with customers. “Creative and new values should be presented by quickly reading customers’ needs through effective communication with customers. Efforts need to be made to provide better value than yesterday, faster than other companies.”

Second, he called for the company to lay the groundwork for sustainable growth by ramping up core capabilities and efficiently reforming conventional business structure.

“Core capabilities are needed to shore up companies amid a vortex of changes, and (we have to) develop businesses to max out our strengths efficiently,” he said. Chairman Shin stressed the need to “become a game changer that can innovate in advance and lead markets based on capabilities.”

He once again called for business innovation through digital transformation.

Third, he demanded the company build a “corporate culture based on flexibility and openness.”

“In order to respond to changes nimbly, rigid corporate culture and clichéd work habitats should be put away, and open innovation to explore new growth momentum will start with our changes,” he said.

Lastly, Chairman Shin called Lotte Group to become “a good company pursuing co-existence and collaboration with society.

He urged his executives and staffers to find ways of contributing to the development of a sustainable society that can grow together with all stakeholders such as customers, executives and staffers, partners and local society.

He stressed confidence-building that what Lotte does can create new values and have a positive influence on our society.

Looking back at last year, Chairman Shin said many companies had hard times, influenced by the sagging global economy and implications from the of U.S.-Chinese trade conflict.

But Lotte had marked big and small achievements like the dedication of a large chemical complex in the United States and the listing of Lotte Reit.

He extended whole-hearted gratitude to executives and staff members who made strenuous efforts to the development of Lotte.

Investment uncertainties, caused by geopolitical risks, are predicted to continue this year, and dramatic market environment changes are also so powerful enough to collapse prominent global companies.

All business units are standing in a vortex of omnidirectional changes such as demographic changes, consumer paradigm shift and concern on eco-friendly values.

“We have maintained leadership and grown up in business sectors in which we have been with for more than 50 years, and do we have a competitive edge to lead the business sector in 50 years ahead?”

If not that, he called for all factors to be overhauled, starting from the conventional business tactics, management and work attitudes, stressing “back to the basics from the scratch.”

The reason is that the market environment of today requires more than doing well moderately to survive, he said.

A breathtaking aerial view of Lotte World Tower. (Photos: Lotte Group)