On a digital future: A chat with the president of Samsung Asia

Sang-Jin Park likes to smile. A lot. But for the president and CEO of Samsung Asia, it isn't the exultant grin of a dotcom entrepreneur at his first IPO. In fact, it's more a wry twist of the lips--a sure sign of a man who has obviously seen it all.

	Park was all smiles on his birthday

Yet for all his experience, it wasn't jadedness that colored his speech when we pulled this Piscean aside during his birthday celebrations at CeBIT, the giant tradeshow in Hannover.

"When I first joined Samsung, it was still a small company in the middle of a rice field in Suwon (a city 30km south of Seoul). Now when I look back at what Samsung has achieved over the past 30 years, it's amazing."

In his long career at the Korean firm, Park has shown he can tread the waters of change as well as his astrological counterpart--in different business environments.

Widely considered as one of the key persons behind Samsung's global success in the mobile phone business, where he once served as the executive vice-president and general manager of the Global Mobile Communication Division, Park left his handset behind in 2004 to helm the business in Southeast Asia and Oceania, which experienced double-digit growth in sales revenue in 2006 under his stewardship.

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"I would like to make a contribution, to help move Samsung from the hardware-based business to a solutions-oriented business," said the man who's still not done with what he wants to achieve.

Indeed, at CeBIT 2007 in Hannover, Germany, Samsung announced a new partnership with both Solution Printing Partners (SP3), a printing solutions company, and IBM. The solutions add-on to the printers is exactly what Park envisions as the new direction Samsung is taking to differentiate itself from its competitors.

"Software is increasingly important to us, but if we move too far away from our core business, the chance for failure is higher. We have to expand the business while bearing in mind our core competencies, such as expanding only within the neighborhood of the core business," he said of the new printer solutions alliance.