IDENTIFY THE ENTREPRENUERIAL QUALITIES, COMPETENCIES, MANAGEMENT

STYLES, ISSUES, SOCIAL RESPONSIBLITIES AND ETHICS.

To cure my hangover from the Korean series Crash Landing On You, I’ve decided to watch the
JTBC’s Kdrama Itaewon Class. Since I never had a chance to watch other series of Park Seo
Joon, Itaewon Class gave me a different feeling. The show provides me various life lessons to
reflect on. It sets apart from the typical Korean drama story that focuses on the growing love
between the lead actors. The show also deals with social issues, such as gender equality and
racism.
Itaewon Class is more than just a revenge story. The series portrays how we get through life
amidst the struggles we encounter. It emphasizes that our future should not be defined by our past
mistakes.
The story revolves around how Park Saeroyi (character of Park Seo Joon) never compromises his
principles regardless of the circumstances, the struggles he faced as he starts over again, and how
he never gives up chasing his dreams, no matter how long it takes.
One of the things that I love about the series is that it gives various lessons about building a
business, too. Many business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs out there can learn from this
Kdrama.
Here are some of the business lessons I got while watching Itaewon Class.
Learn from your competitor
Park Saeroyi spent his prison years planning to build his father’s dream — having his restaurant.
He developed a 15-year plan.
To be productive inside the prison, he read the autobiography of Chairman Jang that tells how
Jangga started as a small pub and eventually became one of the biggest brands in Korea.
Charmain Jangga’s motto “stick with the business basics” became his inspiration in building his
own pub.
In the business world, it is recommended for business owners to watch for their competitors. Look
for the wins, losses, and the relationship they have with their customers. Doing this will enable
you to correct what you are doing wrong and improve the thing that you are good at.
Pick the right location
Right after he got out of prison, he went to Itaewon to meet his first love, Soo-ah. The different
vibe and diversity of the people in Itaewon made Park Saeroyi decide to put up his pub in this
vibrant city.
One of the important aspects that every entrepreneur should look into when building a business is
to pick the right location. The business that you are putting up should complement your brand and
must be accessible to your target market.
Maximize social media
In this age of technology, many businesses utilize social media to market their brand and reach
their customers.
Being a novice in the business industry, Park Saeroyi is not aware of this and sticks with the
traditional marketing of giving out flyers of their pub.
Luckily, he met Jo Yi-Seo, a high school student, (who later became DanBam’s manager) and
suggested that he should try advertising his pub on social media since this is the trend in the
business world.
True enough, DanBam increases its sales and widen their reach when Yi-Seo posted about the pub
in her social media accounts. Being a social media influencer, she manages to promote DanBam
by posting photos of the pub and giving her own reviews about the food and service.

Have an investment
As many financial experts suggest when it comes to stock market investing, buy low and sell
high. And do it for the long term.
This was Park Saeroyi done with his father’s insurance benefit. He invested it in Jangga Group
when the company faced a crisis and dropped its stock price. After years of investment, his money
grows exponentially that allows him to buy his own building.
Value your people
One of the surefire secrets to business success is by giving value to your people. Your people are
the ones who help you in building your dream. Without them, you won’t be able to achieve your
business goal.
As shown in the finale episode of Itaewon Class, Park Saeroyi said in his speech that he values
his people more than the money. This was also portrayed when his chef, Ma Hyeon-yi struggles in
her cooking. Despite the shortcomings, Park Saeroyi values her and believes that she can do
better, as long as she put her heart into it. In fact, she even won on the TV, The Best Pub.
Alongside this is the trust built between the boss and his people. This trust is essential to achieve a
successful business.

I’ve recently been hooked on the webtoon-based Kdrama “Itaewon Class,” depicting the story of
Park Saeroyi, a high school dropout and ex-con who seeks revenge against the owner of the
country’s top food conglomerate, Jang Dae Hee.
Revive the street, grow the business
As compelling as the revenge story goes, it’s not what really sold me on the series. Instead, it’s
Saeroyi’s persona as a businessman and the tidbits of business advice littered throughout the
episodes that piqued my interest as someone whose work revolves around writing about tech
startups and startup founders.
At one point, Saeroyi is forced to relocate his business, and seeking to avoid landlords altogether,
buys a building to house his bar and resto’s next location. Unfortunately, the building he is able to
afford is situated in an alleyway with hardly any traffic. While his manager launches social media
campaigns to promote the new location, it doesn’t lead to the long lines they had enjoyed in their
previous spot.
A friend and restauranteur advises him that regulars are important in such an alley with sparse
traffic. Then, seemingly prompted by such advice, the scenes that follow show Saeroyi helping
out the other restaurants and bars along the street. His manager questions the practicality of such
an approach when his own business isn’t doing well, and Saeroyi responds saying that he’s been
spending time with the other shops for survival — the street needs to be revitalized if their
business is to survive.
When cooperation trumps competition
His response oddly reminded me of a piece on the Ken about online lending in Indonesia. Online
lending platforms began working together late 2019 to create an alternative data centre to better
monitor for fraud and bad loans that have been plaguing the market.
There are certain scenarios — from a market under threat from negative externalities (an empty
street or fraudsters) to a nascent market with untapped opportunity — where sticking to flat-out,
unhealthy competition limits market value and can be detrimental to all players in the long run.
Saeroyi’s door-to-door approach isn’t the only solution. In his meeting with the restauranteur, the
latter had already pitched several ideas to the local government to bring more foot traffic to the
area, but they had been ignored. Saeroyi took it upon himself to help liven up the market.
When it comes to both markets under threat and blue oceans with opportunities yet untapped,
cooperation and focusing on the larger market can be needle moving for market capitalization,
instead of burning cash in an unhealthy competition that will likely lead to no long-term winner.
Sharing is supporting market growth
Of course cooperation doesn’t have to involve sharing recipes or going door-to-door; a business
still has to remain competitive. There are several ways where such relationship building and
positioning can bring returns to the business:
1. Making specific technology infrastructure public. We’ve seen this with the open source
revolution, and when tech platforms opened up business opportunities by making APIs or
software public. Such an approach can make players within the same space users of a
competitor.
2. Thought leadership. Pioneers share lessons for other players, establishing themselves as
leaders in the market. We see this often in the marketing industry, where top agencies dish
out advice on winning campaigns that smaller players look up to.
3. One can also be the business that raises the market cap within their industries, as with
Amazon extending into cloud services and fresh produce or Tencent’s superapp WeChat
hosting other apps within its ecosystem.
4. Building key relationships with institutions to drive regulation. Given government’s
reactionary stance to rule setting and infrastructure support, starting such relationships not
only enables the business to influence how the market grows but also sets the business as a
leader in the market from a branding standpoint.

Key to engaging in such approaches is (1) having certain differentiation or be at a level of growth
relative to other players where it is not impractical to cooperate and (2) extending to lines of
business valuable to competitors or adjacent markets.
Staying ahead of the game is also crucial as it arms the business with enough assets to share with
the market without jeopardizing differentiation. If Saeroyi didn’t have enough employees or
hadn’t established marketing and operations after moving to the new location, it would have been
useless and impratical to already start helping other business.
Also, Saeroyi didn’t help the other restaurants by sharing his suppliers or recipes; he simply
helped fixing up the signages of stores and their displays. While such elements do play a factor in
the decision-making process of customers, it’s not core to the business. Ultimately, if the street
looks better because the stores look better, that creates a larger pie for the stores to split up.
 The Entrepreneurial Personality
Studies of the entrepreneurial personality find that entrepreneurs share certain key traits. Most
entrepreneurs are
 Ambitious: They are competitive and have a high need for achievement.
 Independent: They are individualists and self-starters who prefer to lead rather than
follow.
 Self-confident: They understand the challenges of starting and operating a business and
are decisive and confident in their ability to solve problems.
 Risk-takers: Although they are not averse to risk, most successful entrepreneurs favor
business opportunities that carry a moderate degree of risk where they can better control the
outcome over highly risky ventures where luck plays a large role.
 Visionary: Their ability to spot trends and act on them sets entrepreneurs apart from
small-business owners and managers.
 Creative: To compete with larger firms, entrepreneurs need to have creative product
designs, bold marketing strategies, and innovative solutions to managerial problems.
 Energetic: Starting and operating a business takes long hours. Even so, some
entrepreneurs start their companies while still employed full-time elsewhere.
 Passionate. Entrepreneurs love their work, as Miho Inagi demonstrated by opening a
bagel shop in Tokyo despite the odds against it being a success.
 Committed. Because they are so committed to their companies, entrepreneurs are willing
to make personal sacrifices to achieve their goals.