Specific Strategies for New Business Promotion
On the 25th, a new business sharing meeting chaired by Heo Tae-soo, chairman of GS Group, was held. This was a gathering of the highest-level executives at the group level to secure new technologies in the fields of digital, artificial intelligence (AI), bio, and climate change, and to explore concrete plans for new business development.
GS Group announced that on this day, about 70 people, including Chairman Heo, presidents of GS affiliates, and executives in charge of new businesses, held a marathon meeting from 9 a.m. until late evening at the GS Tower in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. This new business sharing meeting is the third since it was first held in September 2022.
In his opening remarks at the new business sharing meeting, Chairman Heo said, "The key to overcoming recession and low growth is new technology," and added, "We must not stop attempting to combine GS's business capabilities with new technologies." To publicly demonstrate his commitment to new business development based on new technologies, his first activity of the new year was to attend CES 2024, the world's largest electronics and IT exhibition in Las Vegas, USA, and visit GS Futures, an investment corporation in San Francisco. At the New Year's executive meeting on the 4th, he defined 2024 as "a time of opportunity to take significant steps forward in new business."
Chairman Huh Tae-soo speaking at the GS Group New Business Sharing Meeting on the 25th [Photo by GS]
Each affiliate announced new business plans that combine new technologies with GS's existing business capabilities in the new business areas promoted by GS.
Investment companies including GS Corporation, GS Futures, and GS Ventures introduced the overall new business strategy and investment status, while affiliates such as GS Caltex, GS Energy, and GS EPS reviewed the commercialization status of key new business areas such as industrial bio, circular economy, and EV charging.
The industrial bio case was highlighted. Industrial bio refers to the field that develops alternative materials to petrochemical products using biotechnology. It is also called white bio, in contrast to red bio, which pertains to drug development for disease treatment. GS has been discovering biotech companies through its investment corporations GS Futures and GS Ventures in the highly competitive global bio technology sector.
GS expects to combine the new material development technology of biotech ventures with GS's mass production capabilities. GS Caltex has established a large-scale mass production system by successfully commercializing petrochemical alternative materials such as 2,3-BDO through its technology research institute over the past decade.
The management also presented strategies for promoting new businesses. The new business portfolio was divided into three stages: business expansion (Scale-up), early business nurturing (Accelerate), and investment and exploration (Sensing), and the commercialization strategies for each stage were shared.
The business expansion stage refers to cases where new technologies that have undergone initial investment and demonstration are combined with GS's existing business capabilities and have completed small-scale commercialization tests, and full-scale scale-up is pursued. Industrial bio, circular economy, and EV charging fall into this category.
In the early business nurturing stage, various efforts are made to concretize promising technologies into meaningful businesses, such as the VPP (Virtual Power Plant) area, which maximizes power efficiency using data technology.
Finally, the investment and exploration stage involves investing in new technologies and attempts that can change industry paradigms while seeking opportunities. Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) and new energy belong to this category.
GS stated, "Starting this year, the new business sharing meeting will be expanded to twice a year, once in the first half and once in the second half," and added, "The pace of new business development in GS Group will accelerate."
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