During the same period, however, Korea’s POSCO has managed not just to survive but to thrive. The question is how? Privatized in 2000 just as China began flooding markets with cheap steel, POSCO has successfully pivoted from competing on price to competing on innovation. It introduced new revenue-generating offerings as well as innovative cost-saving processes while also improving its environmental footprint and overall performance. Ranked 4th worldwide in terms of production, and named the world’s most competitive steelmaker for seven straight years by World Steel Dynamics,[3] POSCO has also been listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for 12 years in a row and has ranked first in the steel industry on this index for two years,[4] POSCO has achieved these results via extensive Six Sigma and related innovation initiatives that drive collaboration not just among employees but also among customers, suppliers and other strategic partners. This strategy has proven both adaptive and sustainable. The takeaway: even in a mature, seemingly commoditized sector like steel, opportunities to compete on the basis of value-added differentiation exist.[5] Here, Six Sigma and related operational strategies to drive innovation have been fundamental to what is known in the firm as the “POSCO Way POSCO’s success story As brief background, the South Korean government established POSCO in April 1968, as part of a broader national industrial strategy to rebuild its economy, which was then still recovering from years of devastation under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945, the ravages of WWII, followed soon after by the Korean War in the 1950s. The latter left South Korea with an enemy to the North and an economy in ruins. Self-sufficiency in iron and steel was deemed critical to Korea’s broader economic development. With backing from the Korean government plus $119 million in loans and grants from the U.S. and $54 million in credit from the Export-Import Bank of Japan, as well as technical assistance from Nippon Steel and other corporations, POSCO was launched.[6] Effectively a state-run company, POSCO completed its first production line in 1973, with an annual capacity of 1.03 million tons of crude steel. By 1983, the company built Pohong Works, with capacity for 9.1 million tons of crude steel per year. Two years later it began construction of Gwangyang Works, completed in 1992 with an additional 11.4 million ton capacity. When the 1997 Asian financial crisis hit, however, the Korean government began restructuring its industrial policies, including its role at POSCO. Its first move was to announce plans to privatize POSCO, a plan initiated in December 1998, when the government sold all of the shares then held by Korea’s Ministry of Finance and Economy. Seven months later, in July 1999, the state-run Korea Development Bank sold some of its shares, as the government’s stake fell to just 12.84 percent, with privatization completed by October 2000.[7]