"Employee Becomes 'CEO' in 3rd Year: LG Uplus's Experimental 'In-house Venture' Succeeds"

'LGU+ In-house Venture' Selecting Ideas for Commercialization
Growing Interest Among Trend-Sensitive MZ Generation Employees

Employees selected for the in-house venture are gathered to share ideas and discuss future plans.

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Hye-seon] LG Uplus announced on the 13th that it has launched the selection of ‘LGU+ In-house Venture,’ which commercializes ideas proposed by employees. From the idea contest held from the 1st of last month to the 10th of this month, a total of 55 people and 21 teams applied. An evaluation panel composed of internal and external experts will select the best teams based on synergy with existing businesses and marketability.

Selected in-house ventures will leave their regular duties and spend about six months developing services and verifying the market in a separate space prepared outside the company. If judged to be competitive, commercialization will be pursued. Even if the final decision is made not to commercialize, participants can return to their original work without any burden. LG Uplus plans to complete the final selection by next month and start concretizing ideas from December.

LG Uplus first introduced the in-house venture system in 2019. Thanks to the success of ‘Diver,’ the quick delivery brokerage service and LGU+’s first in-house venture, the company has been selecting in-house venture teams twice a year since 2020. The purpose is to build an innovative organizational culture and secure future growth engines by commercializing employees’ challenging and fresh ideas. If there is high growth potential through independent external management, spin-offs are also possible. So far, four teams have spun off, raising a total investment of about 6 billion KRW. One team is currently preparing for spin-off.

LG Uplus said, “Since the in-house venture system is designed to find innovative business ideas that can change customers’ daily lives, it attracts high interest and response from MZ generation employees who are sensitive to trends.” In fact, about 40% of the employees who applied for this contest were young employees with less than 10 years of service. Kim So-yeon, CEO of ‘Eollong,’ which recently spun off from LGU+ In-house Venture, was born in 1996 and joined LG Uplus three years ago. As a member of the MZ generation familiar with the sharing economy, she proposed a pet-friendly space rental service and became the ‘CEO.’

An LG Uplus official said, “Looking at the ideas submitted to the in-house venture, we can read keywords that the MZ generation focuses on,” citing ‘platform’ as a representative example. In fact, among the five teams that made it to the final screening of this year’s first half contest, four teams proposed platform business ideas connecting customers around keywords such as play and hobbies. Among these, three ideas were finally adopted and are undergoing market verification.

This aligns with the ‘Uplus 3.0’ declared recently by CEO Hwang Hyun-sik. Uplus 3.0 is LG Uplus’s future growth strategy centered on four major platforms: lifestyle, play, growth care, and WEB 3.0. In a message to employees, CEO Hwang emphasized ‘a platform where customers can spend more time’ and repeatedly highlighted the representative keywords of the MZ generation, ‘subscription’ and ‘routine.’

In particular, CEO Hwang actively participates in the selection of in-house ventures as the head of the ‘Future Preparation Committee,’ a decision-making group related to new business promotion. LG Uplus plans to actively utilize in-house ventures to understand the needs of the MZ generation and discover new businesses that capture customers’ time.

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