Samsung owes its rise from middling chaebol to global powerhouse to the achievements of the current chairman Lee. He urged his executives to invest aggressively in order to gain scale and market share—regardless of short-term profits. “Our chairman consistently made the decision to invest regardless of the business environment,” says Kwon Oh-hyun, a Samsung Electronics vice chairman and head of its semiconductor business. Kwon, who earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford before joining Samsung in 1985, says there was a widespread belief back then that the elder Lee “was crazy and would bankrupt the company” with his investment in memory chips. “But he succeeded and became legendary.”