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 Dong-Sung Cho, (January 12, 1949 ~) is a Korean educator and scholar .

Professor Dong-Sung Cho graduated from Seoul National University with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree and earned his doctoral degree in Business Administration from Harvard Business School. From 1978 to 2014, he was Professor of Strategy and International Business at Seoul National University, serving as the Dean of the SNU College of Business Administration (2001-2003) and the Dean of the Graduate School of International and Area Studies (1999-2001). From 2014 to 2016, he served as Professor of Strategy at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB), an American modeled business school in Beijing, China. From 2016 to 2020, he served as President of Incheon National University. Currently he is Professor Emeritus of Strategy & International Business at Seoul National University and Chairman of the Institute for Industrial Policy Studies (IPS).

Present to Future

Dong-Sung Cho serves as the Chairman of The Institute for Industrial Policy Studies (IPS). IPS has played a leading role in the fields of regional industrial policy, national competitiveness, national brand, sustainability reporting, government policy development, and industry advisory work on creating shared value. The organization carries out empirical studies on worldwide industrial policies, advisory work on government organizations and consulting activities for corporate strategic planning. It also provides a range of education programs for government officials and business executives.

Since 2000, IPS has published annual reports on corporate and country brand valuations. IPS has positioned itself as one of the world's top three research institutes for national competitiveness research, along with Swiss IMD (International Institute for Management Development) and WEF (World Economic Forum.) According to the September 2020 rankings, Korea's national competitiveness would rise to the top 10 out of 62 countries if it adopted a differentiation strategy, but would remain in 26th place with no strategy and fall to 38th with a low-cost strategy. At the same time, Korea’s national brand valuation ranked 8 out of 33 countries.

As the 2nd President of the Hanseatic League of Universities (HLU), an alliance of more than 100 universities worldwide, Dong-Sung Cho launched a new and innovative university ranking system. The new model called World’s Universities with Real Impact (WURI) was created to stimulate and evaluate universities' flexible and innovative efforts to foster the future workforce that meets the demands of industry and society.

Dong-Sung Cho is the Founding Chairman of the Research Center for Mechanism-Based Management Philosophy and is researching mechanism-based business administration with colleagues and students. In addition, he is Chairman of the Board of Inspection of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office of the Republic of Korea, a Board Director of the Korea Professional Football League, Chairman of the Board of the National Nature Trust, Honorary Consul General of Finland in Seoul and Honorary Chairman of the Institute of K-Brand Promotion.

Recent Activity

In July 2020, Dong-Sung Cho completed his term as the 15th President of Incheon National University (INU), the only national university in Korea that has been granted incorporated status other than Seoul National University (SNU). Among the innovative programs that President Cho implemented at INU, the four major programs are: “Focused Research University” (FRU) in research; “Matrix College” in education; and “Tri-versity” and “International Teacher’s License” in the fields of social contribution.

At INU, Focused Research University (FRU) is a system wherein professors are directed to pre-selected areas of research and conduct convergence research in conjunction with their major fields. (In Comprehensive Research University (CRU), the professors have no stipulations on their fields of research.) INU provides research funds and other services to all 500 professors in 64 Departments of INU’s 11 Colleges when they conduct research into one of the following areas: Biotechnology, Post-unification Integration of Korea, Localization of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Smart City and Smart Energy, Climate Change and Green Climate Fund, and Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. With the FRU system, INU strives towards gaining global competitiveness in 2 to 3 out of 6 focus areas with the aim of becoming a university unmatched in the industry.

Regarding education, he developed a concept of “Matrix College.” INU’s Matrix College is composed of 3 axes: the X axis includes 64 existing academically-oriented majors; the Y axis includes 55 industry-oriented subjects developed by 28 corporations, 7 NGOs, and 20 organizations; and the Z axis includes all elective courses. Students who already chose a major from the X axis may choose one of the subjects from the Y axis in order to have industry experiences. In this context Matrix college is “companies-on-campus”.

Dr. Cho believes that today’s universities need to offer programs to people for 3 phases of their lives. His “Tri-versity” concept provides: college education in the early 20’s, opportunities to re-focus and explore new career trajectories in the 40’s, and in the 60’s for the 3rd stage of preparation. The educational program “International Teacher’s License (ITL)” is available to over one million young unemployed people in Korea. ITL graduates can find employment in various parts of the world where over 200 developing countries are desperately in need of teachers.

President Cho transformed Incheon National University into an “Incubator of Start-ups” in just 3 years. INU was ranked 1st among Korea’s national universities in promoting start-ups of local inhabitants for the period of 2016 through 2018. Under the premise that staff was the primary driving force, he first encouraged staff start-ups followed by students and faculty. He also taught the Creative Start-up course each semester. In 2018, students from Incheon National University established 41 start-ups, more than twice the number of the second in ranking,16 produced from Seoul National University. In 2019, Incheon National University ranked first among 400 domestic universities with 61 student start-ups, surpassing 49 from Yeungnam University (2nd prize), and 43 from Hanyang University (3rd prize).

From 2017 to 2019, Dr. Cho served as the president of the Federation of University Presidents representing 32 regional universities in Gyeonggi Province and Incheon City. From 2018 to 2020, he was Chairman of the Korean University Accreditation Institute which is given the authority by the Ministry of Education to accredit 190 universities in Korea every 5 years.

Dong-Sung Cho founded the Port-city University Summit (PUS). The inaugural conference was held at the INU campus in 2017, bringing together 25 university presidents and representatives to develop a global network among port-city universities to exchange ideas and views. The 2nd Summit in 2018 was held in Taipei, Taiwan, and the 3rd in 2019 in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE.

In 2018, at the 220th anniversary of the founding of Hanze University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, Dr. Cho proposed the establishment of the Hanseatic League of Universities (HLU) for the 21st century. The 1st Conference of the League was convened at the site. In 2019, during the 2nd annual conference at the Incheon National University campus, the new university ranking concept called WURI Ranking (World’s Universities with Real Impact) was adopted by over 250 delegates in attendance, including the presidents of 73 universities.

WURI Ranking is differentiated from the existing world university rankings in evaluation criteria, evaluation methods, and evaluation targets. The evaluation criteria are 1) Impact of university research and development on society and industry (instead of academic research of professors as sole evaluation). 2) Students' entrepreneurship (instead of employment rate). 3) University education on ethics, character, and social responsibility (instead of graduates’ salary).

The evaluation method is the review of case studies of innovative programs that each university conducts to change the future (instead of statistics based on past performance). The evaluation target consists of traditional universities and innovative non-degree granting programs with the high school graduate’s preference in consideration. (instead of the more rigid qualifications of the Ministry of Education).

According to 2020 WURI Ranking, degree-granting institutions such as Stanford (1st), MIT (2nd), Aalto University of Finland (3rd) and Arizona State University (7th), along with non-degree granting innovative schools, such as Minerva Schools at KGI of the U.S. (5th), Singularity University of the U.S. (16th) and Ecole 42 of France (17th) are included in the global top 100. In Korea, Incheon National University (35th) is ranked second after Seoul National University (15th). WURI Ranking is co-presented by Hanseatic League of Universities (HLU), the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), the Taylor Institute of Franklin University Switzerland (TIFUS), and The Institute for Policy and Strategy on National Competitiveness (IPSNC).

Past

Dr. Cho was Professor at Seoul National University’s business school for 36 years from 1978 to 2014. He taught courses in strategy, international business, sustainability management, design management, and creativity. From 2014 to 2016, he was Professor of Strategy at CKGSB in Beijing. Dr. Cho received a doctoral degree from Harvard Business School in 1976, and worked at Gulf Oil Corporation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before joining Seoul National University in 1978. He was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Business School, University of Michigan, Boston University, Duke University, INSEAD in France, Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration (now Aalto University), University of Sydney, the University of Tokyo, Hitotsubashi University, Peking University, Zhejiang University and Nankai University.

Dr. Cho published 115 academic papers in major journals. Among the 70 books that he authored or coauthored, 19 are in English and 5 in Chinese. He also has written 3 novels. His most recently published books are: 4FACT: Four Creative Strategies to Change the Paradigm and Creative Solutions: How to Break the Wall of Creation. In these two works he analyzes the process of creativity, and explains that creativity is not only for the “extraordinary,” but once the process is learned, anyone can be creative.

In 2007, he received the Order of Service Merit - Yellow Stripes award from the government of Korea. He also received the Presidential Honor in 2004 and the Order of Industrial Merit in 2000 from the government. He has been repeatedly recognized for his scholastic works, such as The Economist Award by Maeil Economic Daily, the Award for Free Economics Publication Culture by the Federation of Korean Industries, and The Best Book of the Year in Economics/Business by Korea Management Association. In 2015 the President of Finland awarded him The Knight, First Class of the Order of the White Rose of Finland.

The recent poll of corporate executives and managers placed him as “The #1 Management Guru” in Korea.

Dr. Cho received honorary doctoral degrees from Inje University, Busan in 2007 and Aalto University, Helsinki in 2011.