How much do you emphasis on research and development?

Dr Lee: We thrive to make an exceptional effort in R&D and our areas of interest include ophthalmology, contrast media and gastrointestinal products. By dominating these three therapeutic areas, we have developed ourselves as a company with global competitiveness. Our R&D activities include generating special formulation that improves bioavailability and convenience. We are also committed to bringing out solutions to huge unmet needs, and collaborate actively with universities and top-notch research institutes.

Amid the growing competition in the global pharmaceutical market, we constantly strengthen our competence by making strategic investment and increasing our R&D activities in a market-and customer-oriented manner. Our goal is to be one of Korea's top 10 pharmaceutical companies in sales by 2020 through our global R&D capability.

To be a global player, you need to have strong human resources. What is your manpower strength and how do you equip them for international business?

Dr Lee: Our top management team has highly experienced executives from the pharmaceutical industry and is focused on vision-setting and maximized resource allocation for the future pipeline.
We have adopted career-long educational pathway starting from adaptation training program for new employees to strategic vision program for future directors and promotion candidates. To new employees, we offer Taejoon Welcome Program that is composed of basic job skill training and introduction of our corporate culture, people and internal system. Through this program, our newly hired employees gain an understanding of how Taejoon runs internally.

For experienced employees, we provide diverse programs, including leadership skills, pre-MBA, or financial and strategic programs, according to the need of each individual. Over the years with Taejoon's human resource development programs, we have nurtured our key members to grow to be effective communication leaders in our company.

To date, we have worked with a wide variety of training experts and institutions to support training of our employees and we typically use professional corporate training centers offered by institutions such as Steven Covey's Leadership Center. Our talent training program is composed of core value program, job-specific skillset training, and leadership program.

Can you share your manufacturing strengths?

Dr Lee: We mainly manufacture sterile products such as eye drops and injectables in addition to oral solid dosage forms, liquids and powders. Our production capability for multi-eye drop products is in a range of tens of millions of bottles per year and that for both granules and powders is 300 tons per year.