On September 29th, Song In-hyuk, CEO of UniqueGood Company, was invited by SK Group's SUPEX Pursuit Council to deliver an insight lecture to approximately 80 members of the group's executive council and executives. The lecture topic was "Insights for SK Group's Full-Speed AX."
With SK Group's Executive Council and approximately 80 executives in attendance,
Sharing Nano Venture's Full-Speed AX Experience and Journey
This lecture was an opportunity to share how AI agents can actually transform the way companies work and how organizations operate as SK Group rushes toward Full-Speed AX, and what preparations CEOs should make and what decisions they should take. CEO Song In-hyuk unfolded the story based on UniqueGood Company's experience of AI organizational transformation as it evolved into a Nano Venture.
This event was originally planned for approximately 40 people. However, it garnered far more attention than expected, as there were reports that the chairman made a special request for all company executives to attend. Gratefully, the council had already read 'Nano Venture,' followed with interest how a team of nearly 60 went through a difficult time and achieved a remarkable leap, and read all their Facebook posts and blog articles. They shared the background of the lecture invitation. Truly moving!
When the lecture first began, there was hushed silence in the hall. There was half concern about how a small company's story would be received and half curiosity. The organizers had even warned in advance that there might be no questions. But that worry proved completely unfounded. Attendees listened intently to every word of CEO Song In-hyuk, taking notes and photos at key moments and nodding enthusiastically. Thanks to that atmosphere, CEO Song In-hyuk was able to convey his unique insights with even greater depth.
How to escape the quagmire of structural problems where organizations slow down and productivity declines as they grow
At the beginning of the lecture, Song presented calmly the irony that UniqueGood Company experienced as it grew to approximately 60 employees. From the outside, the company appeared to be a notable enterprise—selected as an MZ Mega Trend, listed in Guinness World Records for the world's largest crowd gathering, selected as one of the Boldest Startup 100, and visited by the President himself—but internally, the workplace was completely stalled. Strangely, while expecting productivity to increase as headcount grew, it actually slowed down and quality declined. When hiring was done because more people were needed, paradoxically it led to a repeated cycle of needing even more people. Operating profit that had continued since the company's founding eventually sank into a deficit, and the company became unable to escape the quagmire of B2G subcontracting services. He conveyed this reality through his unique storytelling. To break through this, he called out "Let's implement AI too!" but the response was "We're already using AI." In the end, people need to oversee more. As content creation speed increased dramatically with a single click, the work requiring human oversight also grew. Since processes remained unchanged, he vividly described how only the bottlenecks grew. Eventually, things went wrong, and in January 2026, amid the worst management crisis, virtually all employees resigned. When he shared this experience of being at the brink of disaster, sighs poured from the executives' mouths.
It's not AX, it's AO!
Individual-level AI usage ends in failure
The breakthrough Song found was AO. AO stands for Agentic Organization. Rather than approaching AI usage at the individual level to boost productivity, it was about creating an environment where agents learn from members' conversations and feedback and grow on their own. He clearly emphasized that what leaders really want is not AX but AO.
Merely improving individual productivity with AI tools does not increase organizational productivity. No matter how many AI tools are provided to members, the organization rarely speeds up, and it's difficult to create meaningful changes in sales. This is because the workflow processes that must be completed to finish a single task have not changed at all. There is still insufficient consideration of how to address the complex task delegation and communication among the members involved in those processes and between teams.
Ultimately, AI used by individuals is essentially a black box. The organization cannot know what each person is doing. Thanks to individual tools, the speed and volume of outputs have increased dramatically, but since processes remain the same, only bottlenecks grow.
AX and AO must be solved by leaders. Delegating AI transformation to members will inevitably fail.
There are more challenges to address. Who will redefine and reassign the roles of skilled professions like designers, developers, and marketers who have taken on existing functional roles? How much experience does that person have with AX? And what is the extent of their decision-making perspective and authority? CEO Song In-hyuk conveyed through his direct and painful experience that each of these is a difficult challenge. What would happen if members were asked to tackle problems that even the CEO finds difficult by saying "Try AX"? In fact, MIT research shows that 95% of generative AI adoption attempts by companies failed to produce clear results. Song openly confessed that he too delegated AX to his development team of over 10 people. But the improvements they could make were limited to improvements within the development team itself.
Presenting a Structure for Creating AO
Therefore, CEO Song In-hyuk proposed not approaching organizational AX from an individual productivity perspective, but redesigning it from scratch from an organizational productivity perspective. This means completely reversing the way people learn AI and instruct it, creating a structure where AI learns from people and evolves on its own. This is exactly AO (Agentic Organization), an agent organization.
In AO, rather than each member using AI separately, a single agent serves as a gateway, acting as a channel that receives all member conversations and instructions. This gateway communicates with one or more agents to plan, execute, and improve not only individual tasks but also projects and the entire business organization's work.
You can understand this more easily by looking at the diagram. Organizations that were previously led by people, like Team 1, Team 2, or Business 1, Business 2, are now led by agents as the main driving force. And each individual member transforms into a role where they serve as the head and CEO of each business, setting goals and managing how those goals are executed and progressed.
Changing habits meets resistance
Existing communication and work habits must be leveraged in reverse
But there is one more point not to be missed here: people resist when asked to change their habits.
What people find most difficult is creating new habits. For example, if an organization that has only used Kakao Talk is asked to use Teams or Slack, members find it much more difficult than expected. Conversely, if people familiar with tools like Slack are asked to use a completely different approach, they develop resistance for various reasons. Therefore, the most important thing when creating AO is not disrupting existing habits, or at least providing a work environment similar to the current one.
UniqueGood Company's AXIT has already reached a level of self-evolution. When examined closely, it has a very similar interface and user experience to existing communication tools. Members simply use the tool as they always have. However, the agent listens to all public member conversations and instructions. When someone calls the agent directly or when a conversation is identified as an instruction, the agent executes the necessary work and reports the results just like normal communication. Members give feedback just as they would when talking to colleagues. Over time, the agent learns the organization's communication and execution methods and becomes increasingly smarter and faster. Members work in increasingly sophisticated environments, and a learning loop where people and agents grow together is completed.
On this day, CEO Song In-hyuk also demonstrated the remarkable changes created over the past 6 months using AXIT designed with this philosophy. The organization, which once grew to 58 members, was in a deficit of tens of billions of won. Now with only 6 members, the company achieved operating profit in just 6 months and even confirmed full-year 2026 operating profit. Although it was a change in a small organization, many executives, including the chairman, responded enthusiastically and offered congratulations.
As execution becomes cheaper, there is demand for transformation as an executor who directly creates results
Now, due to AI, the speed of execution has become beyond imagination. However, as mentioned before, conversely, the time and economic cost of making decisions and taking responsibility has grown correspondingly. In this state, approaching management in the old way can actually hinder organizational productivity. Instead, now we must move beyond the production stage and run as actors who directly create results, and each member must be sensitive to revenue and costs.
Not hiring new employees? People with a "Need for Close" receive even more attention
In the past, what was required of junior employees was speed. There was a standard of how quickly they could adapt to the organization and passionately perform the work the organization required, given that they needed to learn. But now agents do those tasks better. Instead, what is now required of new employees is not sitting at a desk alone, creating documents and outputs, and reporting and sharing them, but being more actively involved in actual person-to-person communication and communication between people and agents. They should seek to understand the company's goals macroscopically rather than performing individual tasks, and should take interest in relationships with customers outside the company. Rather than just producing and tossing it aside, it is required that they stay with their assigned work until it is completed and close the door. Each person must have interest as an executor and PM who takes responsibility. Demanding too much from new hires? Companies don't offer special treatment just because someone is good at using search engines.
Grow Intelligence Scale rather than the scale of hiring
You will soon experience the limits of increasing individual productivity. The formula that more people must be hired to do larger work is now over. Instead, we have entered an era of growing the intelligence scale of the entire organization. Now, for organizations, designing and operating how large this intelligence scale can be will become core competitive advantage. Therefore, we must explore methods and challenges from the perspective of AO rather than AX!
The group chairman also said, "Each of our organizations must become a Nano Venture!"
Was that why? After the lecture ended, not only were there no shortage of questions, but sharp and incisive questions came from here and there, and we were able to share frank thoughts as leader to leader. One executive shared impressions instead of asking questions. They said they deeply resonated with the message that leaders must be at the forefront of AX, and the idea that rather than advancing individual AI usage, organizations should focus on AO. It was a moment when they clearly resonated with AO being the key keyword of the day.
Moreover, very gratefully, Chairman Choi Chang-won asked the executives after the lecture to purchase and read 'Nano Venture,' saying that each of our organizations must also become a Nano Venture. It was an incredibly heartwarming moment for us.
In fact, we were concerned that the story of tiny UniqueGood Company soaring with AO might be accepted as merely cute or a small case. But after the lecture, many people approached us first and offered sincere encouragement. It was a time that gave us greater courage beyond gratitude.
It seems we have now entered an era where not only small organizations but also large organizations must redefine themselves as Nano Ventures and create new ways of working and work structures. AX is no longer just a story about individuals or small organizations. SK Group is advancing with Full-Speed AX as its goal, and Samsung Electronics is also conducting company-wide education so that all employees use advanced AI. Everyone is gathering again in the square of AI and dreaming of a leap forward. Now the focus is on equipping ourselves with a powerful execution force called agent organizations. We hope you will remember AO and join us in the challenge of building AO organizations. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us via comments or email. We will do our best to help. Thank you!
'Nano Venture' - Meet the story of organizational innovation
You can see in the book introduction and table of contents how the two authors who created regional and space experiences redesigned organizations in the AI era.
'Nano Venture' — Written by Song In-hyuk and Lee Eun-young, Human Cube | View on YES24
'Nano Venture' — Written by Song In-hyuk and Lee Eun-young, Human Cube | View on Kyobo Bookstore
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