LG Innotek Employees Take Direct Initiative in Discovering New Businesses... Propose Over 140 Ideas

Employees of LG Innotek participating in the new business discovery program ‘i-Lab’ and promoting projects.

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyewon] LG Innotek announced on the 18th that it will promote the 'i-Lab' program for employees to discover new business opportunities.

i-Lab is short for 'innovation Lab,' an activity where employees directly propose ideas to discover future growth engines for the company.

LG Innotek established this program to prepare for the future while fostering a culture that boldly challenges without fear of failure. The i-Lab program started its first session in August last year and is currently operating its second session.

Employees can propose any ideas that can innovate the business to i-Lab. So far, through i-Lab sessions 1 and 2, over 100 teams have participated, proposing more than 140 new business ideas such as home training robots and metaverse-based factory simulations.

Idea evaluation is conducted through an open audition format involving all employees. When the proposer presents the idea via video conference, employees can support the ideas they want by clicking 'Like.' They can also freely ask questions or share opinions through real-time comments.

The top 10 ideas with the most 'Likes' become the final candidates for review. Afterward, following evaluation by executives including the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), selected ideas become official i-Lab projects, and separate teams can be formed to push the projects forward.

Employees who proposed the ideas receive support such as independent project rooms and professional consulting during the project period, freeing them from their regular duties. Project members can be composed of any number of people desired through company-wide recruitment.

All employees who submit ideas through i-Lab have the opportunity to receive training from professional consulting firms.

Projects selected through the first i-Lab session last year are currently actively progressing, led by employees in their 30s who proposed the ideas. These projects are scheduled to be completed in November and will then be transferred to each business division for actual commercialization.

Senior Manager Choi Minyong, leader of the optical solutions project, said, "Even when I came up with brilliant business ideas, I never dared to execute them due to existing work. Thanks to the company's active support, being able to freely carry out projects I wanted to try is definitely a good experience and an opportunity for growth."

LG Innotek plans to continue operating the i-Lab program next year by newly introducing a funding program to further expand support scale. CTO (Vice President) Kang Minseok said, "We will actively connect employees' creative ideas to business and spread a culture of bold challenges. We will actively discover various new business items incorporating the latest technologies such as metaverse, blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI) beyond hardware."