Employees of LG Uplus (032640.KS) visited Stanford University in the United States to learn a new way of working that involves viewing problems from the customer's perspective and solving them collaboratively across different departments.
LG Uplus said Monday that it has been running a design thinking education program called "OutSight D.T" for its employees since May. The program allows employees to visit Silicon Valley and participate in Stanford University's design thinking boot camp and on-site training.
In May, 21 participants in the first cohort visited Silicon Valley, and in late June, 12 participants in the second cohort experienced the new way of working there. Design thinking is an approach that begins with understanding and empathizing with customers to define problems and derive solutions. It developed around Stanford University's d.School and is widely used in the product and service development processes of global companies.
The reaction from participating employees has been enthusiastic. Sharing their feedback, participants noted, "It was new to see that global big tech companies spend more time finding 'points of customer inconvenience' than deciding what features to build." They expressed their willingness to break away from their previous work methods and apply the newly learned approaches to their jobs.
"OutSight D.T is an innovation program we designed to apply to our work a mindset that deeply understands customers and redefines problems in new ways," said Yang Hyo-seok, Vice President of LG Uplus. "We will support participants in applying the experience they gained at Stanford and in Silicon Valley to their actual work to enhance customer value."
