Seoul Center

Director of the Seoul Center for Creative Economy and Innovation, Park Yong-ho.
Director of the Seoul Center for Creative Economy and Innovation, Park Yong-ho.

 

The CJ Group is currently generating practical business models and economic effects by utilizing its different cultural content.

Since its opening in July last year, the Seoul Center for Creative Economy & Innovation (CCEI) has fulfilled its role as a creative economic role model by providing various startup programs such as mentoring and training for those with brilliant ideas, hackathon contests and meetings for investment attraction and overseas business expansion. Approximately 300 people have visited the center a day, which is an astonishing number given that it is about 70,000 a year for the Google Campus located in London.

The Seoul CCEI serves as a network hub for mutual prosperity based on cooperation with startups in Seoul City. Also, it works with Seoul City in order to assist in city-lifestyle, design and cultural businesses and their global market penetration. The Seoul CCEI is planning to incubate 300 firms by 2017 via colleges’ and business incubators’ voluntary collaborations.

The Creative Center for Convergence Culture, opened and led by the CJ Group, is a linchpin of cultural creation and convergence facilitating the planning, production, realization and re-investment of convergence-based cultural content. Its vision is to help creators’ ideas to be turned into quality cultural content and business models competitive in the global arena.

One of the Creative Center’s most noteworthy performances of 2015 is the Convergence Content Contest, the first of its kind in South Korea aiming to find excellent convergence content and creators. The 19 contest-winning teams further enhanced their works based on mentors’ and experts’ consulting with regard to content planning, business modeling and marketing know-how. This year, the second Convergence Content Contest is underway in the three categories of Global Convergence Content, Cultural-ICT Convergence Flagship and Social Innovation. “The Creative Center for Convergence Culture has assisted in cultural content creation by various creators,” said Kang Myung-shin, head of the center, adding, “We are providing a comprehensive support not limited to certain regions, markets or stages.”

The CJ Group is also planning to maximize the positive effect of its support for the urban lifestyle field, including culinary culture and fashion, based on its abundant experience in the culture business sector. At the same time, it is working on specific promotion, marketing and distribution measures in cooperation with startups and small businesses in the food industry incubated by the Seoul CCEI. CJ O Shopping’s One Firm One Luxury Program, in particular, has been well received as a no-fee program promoting small and medium enterprises’ products via TV home shopping. Its Kitchen Incubator for mentoring from CJ subsidiaries in the food industry is another example of its popular programs.

“The Seoul CCEI played host to a food tech startup contest with the Google Campus in March this year to find a number of startups in the industry,” Seoul CCEI head Park Yong-ho explained, continuing, “These startups will be provided with the center’s assistance and CJ food subsidiaries’ mentoring from April so that their brilliant ideas are turned into business models.”

Furthermore, the CJ Group is going to help venture and small firms incubated in the CCEI to make inroads into the global market by making use of its experience in the cultural content sector and Korean Wave platforms such as MAMA and KCON.

 

 

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