Social impact

The World Knowledge Forum (www.wkforum.org) is an annual nonprofit conference whose aim is to improve global knowledge sharing on pressing business and macroeconomic issues.

The WKF is hosted by Maeil Business Newspaper, Korea's premier business daily, in a knowledge partnership with Bain & Company.

The conference is the largest of its kind in Korea and since 2000 more than 600 to 1,200 local and global leaders from business, government and academic sectors have attended.

Bain & Company has helped the WKF with its overall agenda development since 2001. Bain has also played key roles in organizing leading plenary and breakout sessions, announcing Bain Korea's industry or service area specific insights and research results.

Bain & Company Korea, in partnership with Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), conducted a pro bono study on maximizing employment potential of Korea. The study was jointly planned and prepared with SBS, as a part of SBS’s annual Future Korea Report series.

The report pointed out that:

• A new approach of enhancing the employment rate, not lowering unemployment rate, is necessary
• Some 4 million additional jobs need to be created for Korea to usher in the $20,000 GDP per capita era, and more than half of them have to be filled by females, especially those with a higher education
• One million jobs will disappear by 2010 if the economy continues to grow at a sluggish 4 percent
• In order to maximize job creation, specific measures must be taken, such as making efforts to create new job demands and at the same time improve the quality of labor supply and create an efficient labor market
• The 120 trillion won of education cost invested in economically inactive college graduates must be turned into a lifetime education budget

Bain and SBS presented the report in a public seminar, which was attended by 400 opinion leaders of Korean business, government and academic communities, including the prime minister. The seminar was broadcast over the SBS channel. SBS also made and televised related special documentaries and news series.

For more information about SBS visit www.sbs.co.kr.

"We need to move away from taking a passive stance of reducing the 800,000 unemployed and boldly establish a goal of encouraging the 14 million economically inactive people, who comprise one third of the total 38 million working age population, to work and thereby realize our full human potential."

—Sunny Yi, Partner
Seoul office

As part of the result of this effort, the university entered into an exclusive partnership with Duke University in the US, for cooperation in their MBA program.

Three years later, Bain Korea jointly developed and launched a strategy class at Seoul National University, School of Economics, which continues to operate successfully. Bain Korea partners and managers teach core strategy concepts in this class and use Korean and global cases.

It is the first time in Seoul National University history that the full responsibility of designing and operating a regular course lies with a foreign strategy consulting company.

Successful CEOs, who are running companies in various industry sectors, are also invited to conduct case studies. Ted Chung, president & CEO of Hyundai Capital and Hyundai Card, Ki Hyung Lee, chairman and CEO of Interpark Corporation and Byung Moo Park, managing director of Newbridge Capital Korea, Ltd. each took part in the lectures for the first semester.

"The objective of this lecture is to summarize the basic corporate decision making tools that continue to hold true even in the global management environment with a flood of mutant situations being created. By introducing real cases from the real world, it is possible to foster global management talents who would be strong both in theory and in practice. It is very rewarding to be able to serve the school and the community/society I live in, in such a manner and most certainly gives me pleasure."

—Chul-Joon Park, Partner

Bain & Company Korea, in partnership with Maeil Business Newspaper, conducted a pro bono study for the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy to uncover strategies to improve fundamentally the industry competitiveness of Korea.

The results of the study were announced in a public seminar with the minister of Commerce, Industry and Energy and published as a book, Knowledge Exporting Nation. The study found that the nominal per capita GDP of Korea could reach $27,000 in 10 years, if Korea upgrades its existing manufacturing industry by combining it with knowledge while at the same time becoming a knowledge exporting nation delivering top-class service.