"Establishing Collaboration System Among Main-Biz Companies"…10th Anniversary of Founding

Seok Yongchan New President of Korea Management Innovation SME Association
Taking Key Role in Open Innovation Era
MainBiz Association Celebrates 10th Anniversary This May
Expanding Member Company Exchanges
Will Focus More on Discovering Excellent SMEs

Seok Yong-chan, Chairman of the Korea Management Innovation Small and Medium Business Association, is discussing the Main-Biz growth strategy and the association's operational aspirations at the association office in Sungin-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul.

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Daeseop] "We will fully leverage the characteristics of MainBiz, which encompasses various industries such as manufacturing, services, distribution/logistics, and construction, to strengthen collaboration between companies."

Seok Yongchan, the newly appointed chairman of the Korea Management Innovation Small and Medium Business Association (MainBiz Association), announced on the 6th that he plans to build a collaboration system by expanding exchanges among member companies.

Chairman Seok emphasized, "In modern society, rather than companies solving everything alone, it is an era of open innovation where companies procure the technologies and ideas they need externally while sharing internal resources with the outside. Strengthening partnerships between startups and scale-ups will also secure opportunities for collaboration and mutual growth."

Chairman Seok was inaugurated as the 4th president of the MainBiz Association on the 26th of last month. He has taken on an important role in the year marking the 10th anniversary of the association's founding this May. He said, "I feel a heavy sense of responsibility and mission. Based on my over 30 years of experience managing small and medium enterprises and operating related cooperatives and associations, I will devote all my efforts to the management innovation, growth, and development of member companies."

Born in 1951, Chairman Seok is a senior SME entrepreneur in his seventies. He serves as the CEO of Hwanam Industry, a manufacturer of plastic packaging containers, and Eunsung Precision Printing, a specialist in special printing packages. He also serves as the chairman of the Korea Plastic Packaging Container Association. He received the Presidential Citation on Commerce and Industry Day in 2003 and the Industrial Medal, a government award for national productivity, last year.

Chairman Seok plans to continuously seek and implement growth strategies for MainBiz Association member companies. He explained, "In preparation for the new market and industrial environment brought by the 4th Industrial Revolution, CEOs need to cultivate an innovation mindset and strive to apply it to management. The association will leverage its strengths in education and fostering innovation mindsets among CEOs and SME employees to upgrade the 'Innovation Education and Training Project.'"

He also intends to faithfully carry out the association’s immediate tasks, such as the enactment of the Small and Medium Enterprise Management Innovation Promotion Act, which has been proposed in the National Assembly. Chairman Seok said, "This is an essential law that can establish an SME-led economic structure and invigorate the national economy. We will do our best to ensure it is finalized in the 20th National Assembly."

MainBiz is a compound word of Management, Innovation, and Business. It refers to companies certified as management innovation-type SMEs by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups. This certification system was introduced based on the Small and Medium Enterprise Technology Innovation Promotion Act to foster management innovation-type SMEs in non-technical fields such as marketing and organizational innovation.

The MainBiz Association is the certification management institution for management innovation-type SMEs. So far, it has discovered and nurtured over 18,000 MainBiz companies and has an organization of about 3,800 member companies, 7 federations, and 96 branches. Companies that obtain MainBiz certification can receive benefits such as preferential treatment in government projects and financing, and additional points in Public Procurement Service bids during the validity period (3 years).

Chairman Seok said, "We internally evaluate that, while focusing on the quantitative growth of the association so far, there has been somewhat insufficient awareness and promotional activities for MainBiz. Going forward, we will promote qualitative improvement so that many excellent SMEs can be attracted to MainBiz through the advancement of the MainBiz verification system."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.