Family-controlled South Korean conglomerates, better known as chaebol, still dominate the nation’s corporate world, but the number of venture firms has continued to grow despite the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2001. Over the past decade, some star start-ups, including Mirae Asset, Naver and NCSoft, have become big business groups and these successes have expanded the base of entrepreneurs.

“To see more Steve Jobs-type innovative CEOs in Korea, I believe that it is more important to support new CEOs to build entrepreneurship to create value, and to manage people in the right way rather than to strengthen fund raising or technology development skills,” Junn Sung-chull, chairman of the Institute of Global Management, told The Korea Herald.

“A start-up tends to have a competitive edge only in passion for success compared with other established companies. Leaders of a venture firm have to be able to create corporate value and to set a vision to keep employees motivated.”

New model for CEO and entrepreneurship education

Lawyer-turned entrepreneur Junn created the IGM, the nation’s first CEO-focused private educational institute and think tank, in March 2003. It has become the top institute for CEO education. He shifted his career from the legal sector to university management in 2000. He served as vice dean of Sejong University and dean of the Graduate School of Management at the same university between 2000 and 2002.

“I found a market for CEO education, while running the advanced management program for CEOs at Sejong University,” Junn said.

The corporate value that the IGM founder developed in the beginning stage is client servantship.

“IGM is dedicated to developing and offering practical and customized educational programs for CEO clients,” Junn said, adding that his own experience as an entrepreneur helped him understand what CEOs need to make the right management decisions.

Another success factor is IGM’s rigid quality control system. IGM runs a research and development center to develop content for CEO education and evaluates the quality of lectures based on audience surveys.

“Even a lecture by a CEO of the nation’s leading conglomerate is evaluated by an audience survey. If he or she gets a low score, the CEO cannot lecture any more. The survey results are shared with all IGM employees 30 minutes after a lecture. The results are also shared with the lecturer within 24 hours of the end of the lecture,” Junn said.

Based on the experience of running about 200 CEO educational programs for a decade, IGM will launch an educational program for entrepreneurs early this year.

The IGM Entrepreneur Academy, will open on March 3 for about 30 entrepreneurs or potential entrepreneurs. The academy has been developed as a social responsibility program.

Different from other educational programs for entrepreneurs, IEA invited top CEOs, star entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, most of whom studied at the IGM, as lecturers or mentors.

“Those lecturers will join the academy as talent donors, which means that they are volunteer lecturers. Entrepreneurs who enrolled in the academy will be able to get practical knowledge and wisdom to cope with unexpected challenges in advancing their start-up and in people management,” Junn said.

Key management talent donors include POSCO CEO Chung Joon-yang, Doosan Group chairman Park Yong-maan, Lock & Lock chairman Kim Joon-il, Humax CEO Byun Dae-gyu and SoftBank Ventures Korea CEO Moon Gyu-hak.

Tuition for the eight-month program will be sponsored 100 percent by IGM and attractive business plans will be funded by the academy.

Export of Korean management skills

The IGM founder is looking to the overseas market for IGM’s second-take off.

“IGM has taken a look at rising demand to learn the management know-how of Korean companies overseas,” Junn said.

IGM has stepped up converting its educational programs in Korean into English and Chinese and investing in educating foreign lecturers.

The Chinese market is one of the key overseas markets targetted by IGM. Last year, IGM signed a memorandum of understanding with the executive MBA program of Nankai University, Tianjin City in mainland China and educated Chinese students based on IGM’s curriculum. One of the most popular programs for Chinese business leaders was the negotiation skills development program.

“We are going to expand partnerships with executive MBA programs overseas and set up a branch to offer the IGM program to local business leaders,” the CEO educator said.

Korean executives and employees working overseas are other targets for the future growth of IGM, he added.

“Education is one key factor for success of Korean companies along with Koreans’ can-do-spirit. Korean global brands like Samsung, LG and Hyundai have invested a lot in educating their executives and employees and their management and leadership skills are becoming a benchmark overseas. IGM will lead the export of CEO educational programs,” Junn said.

By Seo Jee-yeon (jyseo@heraldcorp.com)