The man who took Samsung's semiconductor business to number one in the world, it turns out, never went into the office on weekends. He met artists. He met television producers. He shared meals with people from outside the business world. A career executive who repeatedly turned around money-losing divisions worked by leaving on time and delegating.
These are the words of Kwon Oh-hyun, former chairman of Samsung Electronics, in an interview with Chosun Biz. A man who had not given a single interview in forty years finally spoke—and what came out was raw insight about leadership.
Don't Come to the Office to Organize Your Fridge
That was his warning to his executives.
"If you want to organize the fridge and check expiration dates, go home and do it. When you come to the office, do the work your rank calls for."
His point: when you hoard knowledge and information out of insecurity, the people under you can't grow. Doing a team member's work for them looks tidy in the moment, but if that person never develops, every problem eventually floats back up to you. In an earlier era, being wrong was a sin, so getting chewed out by your boss meant real trouble. But things are different now.
"Even if they make a mistake, that subordinate's skills improve, right? In the age of the fast mover, you can't compete with your own people. You compete with your rivals, and you compete with the future."
That single sentence sets the direction of leadership. Rewriting your team's work to prove you can do it better means you've picked the wrong opponent.
Even Messi Holds the Ball for Less Than a Minute
His practical advice is just as sharp.
Even Messi and Ronaldo, he points out, have the ball for less than a minute over an entire match. Hold it too long and you only invite tackles and injuries. Your job is to be the closer at the decisive moment."A leader has to pass the ball that comes to them, fast. I answered every text and every email the moment I saw it. Sit on the ball and all you're left with is burnout."
Many leaders do the opposite. A report comes in and they let it sit for days. They delay approvals, postpone feedback, defer decisions. And during all that time, the team member is frozen in place. When a leader won't move the ball, the whole team's speed gets shackled to the processing speed of one person.
Archery and Clay Shooting
It's a story about semiconductors, but it cuts to the essence of business strategy. Memory chips are archery. The target is fixed. Read and write faster, smaller, more efficiently. The goal is the same as it was fifty years ago: the precision to hit the ten-ring. It's an area Korea excels at.
Non-memory chips are clay shooting. The target moves. Ten years ago, how could you have known the world would need AI chips? Who predicted that smartphone chips would change the world? Only the U.S., he says, is shooting at that moving target while continuously defining the system itself.
The Shelf Life of "Never Being Wrong" Has Expired
He had harsh words about education, too.
In the age of the fast follower, the "skill of never being wrong" was a competitive edge. Beat Sony, beat Intel—there was a clear target, and a strategy of following it precisely, without waste, carried Korea to the threshold of the developed world. It was a system that rewarded the diligent honor student."Korea's education system, from medical-school prep classes in kindergarten until late at night, teaches nothing but the skill of not being wrong. How are you supposed to beat AI with that?"
But the world has shifted into the age of the fast mover. You no longer know where the next thing will spring from. There's nothing left to copy. In this era, the "skill of never being wrong" may never be wrong, but it never creates anything new either.
His daughter, he says, never attended a single cram school. She didn't get into an elite university, but when he asked whether she was happy, she said she was. And she isn't sending her own children to cram schools either.
"You don't have to graduate from a top school to be happy."
The Leader Who Asks About the Future
The most striking passage in the interview is his recollection of the late chairman Lee Kun-hee.
The questions Lee posed were these: What kind of future is coming. What we need to prepare for. How we're going to grow our talent. Questions about the future, not the revenue. And once you were asked a question like that, you couldn't very well answer "I don't know," so you had no choice but to study it fiercely."Chairman Lee never once gave me an order. I never heard him ask, 'What are the sales numbers?' When a leader only asks about revenue, that organization never develops, not in its entire lifetime."
Here the leader's role comes into focus. Not the person who hands out answers, but the person who poses good questions. Not the person who audits the sales figures, but the person who asks about direction. The caliber of that question determines the caliber of the team.
What Happens When You Drop What Doesn't Pay Today
The story of HBM (high-bandwidth memory) stings, too. It was a technology developed during Kwon's tenure and supplied 100 percent to Nvidia—but later, when margins fell, the company made a purely financial call. It failed to prepare for the future. The result: SK Hynix struck gold with HBM.
A business in the black should still be wound down if it's in decline, and a business in the red should still be held onto if it has a future. At Samsung Display, he made the decision to scale back large-format LCDs—a profitable business—and pivot to mobile OLED. To the people who opposed him, he reportedly asked: "Would you want your own son working here?" Seeing not the numbers of the present but the direction of the future. It's the hardest and the most important judgment a leader makes."Drop something just because it doesn't pay today, and you end up with a result this painful."
The Age of the Fast Mover
One message runs through the entire interview. The age of the copy is over. We've shifted from the age of the fast follower to the age of the fast mover. Refuse to accept that shift, and individuals, organizations, and nations alike will lose their way.
This isn't only about semiconductors—it applies to every line of work. Benchmarking your competitors is no longer enough. What you need is the ability to sense a market that doesn't yet exist and pivot toward it quickly.
And where that ability begins, Kwon shows through his own experience. Meeting people outside the business on weekends. Giving your team the chance to make mistakes. Passing the ball quickly. Winding down even a profitable business when it has no future. It's not a matter of dazzling strategy—it's a matter of how you make judgments.
