What Agenda IP
Does Your Company Own?

A colleague working at an IT company urgently asked for advice after their CEO had been asked to give a talk on AI transformation (AX) at a meeting with all the subsidiary CEOs of one particular conglomerate. Talks about the company’s technologies and services were familiar territory, but this was a first. When I asked how the opportunity had come about, he explained that a small online business publication had covered the company’s internal AI transformation efforts that year, and the conglomerate’s HR team had seen the article and reached out.
A company is made up of countless things. From the outside, however, people remember it through scenes and stories. Every company, from large corporations to startups, is now in AX mode. New examples and powerful moments can become intellectual property (IP) that people want to know about. For companies facing the imperative of adaptation and transformation, this is where their value can take off.

How Agenda IP Becomes a Corporate Asset

The ‘K’ label is everywhere these days. Many Korean companies were established and grew after liberation in 1945, although some date back to the Japanese colonial period. That is why so many companies have recently been celebrating their 80th anniversaries. Meanwhile, the past 30 years have been a period of new entrepreneurship, marked by risk-taking and bold ventures. Traditional companies have continued to build their legacies, while young companies have emerged one after another, with market capitalizations far exceeding those of established industry leaders. Recently, one company was considering how to position itself for the next generation. Looking at the company alone did not reveal a clear direction, but viewing it in the context of the wider industry brought its future positioning into focus. So I advised them to think bigger. The company’s history was closely tied to the industry’s emergence and growth. That history suggested a new identity for the company: a symbol of its industry in Korea—“the founder of the industry”, now embracing younger companies. I advised that an established industry leader can strengthen its position by embracing new developments. Neither trends nor market capitalization figures alone can create this kind of asset. In this way, the company's past shapes its future.
When a company reinterprets its history and strengths through the perspective and symbolic language of a new era and comes to represent a particular agenda, it can build value in new ways. This is why agenda ownership matters. The ideas a company develops and communicates, together with the moments and stories that demonstrate its role, become its own agenda IP. If agenda ownership is about “who represents the agenda,” agenda IP can be understood as the asset a leader and company build by repeatedly demonstrating that role through words and actions.

Agendas Are Claimed Through Scenes and Stories

A fierce battle is also underway to claim new agendas in the pairing of AI with companies' proprietary technologies. Hyundai Motor Group positioned itself in the future humanoid market through its acquisition of Boston Dynamics and demonstrations of its Atlas robot, which also contributed to gains in related share prices. LG’s communications emphasizing its strategic focus on physical AI were also notable, even if they seemed somewhat late.
LG created new momentum with a bold move: Chairman Kwang-mo Koo met NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang at NVIDIA’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. Chairman Koo had previously joined SK Group Chairman Tae-won Chey and NAVER Board Chairman Hae-jin Lee for dinner with Huang in June, before arranging this separate meeting in the U.S. Later, Jensen Huang’s daughter, Madison Huang, also visited LG, creating a narrative of “shuttle business” between the two companies. This demonstrated that a chairman's direct involvement can lead to tangible results.
The first tangible result of PI(President Identity) is a leader’s first action. Through this process, LG brought its identity—previously described in terms of electronics, energy, chemicals, and other businesses—into focus around a single agenda: humanoids and physical AI. It also clarified its strategic priorities. LG conveyed to the market the conviction that it would play a decisive role alongside NVIDIA in the physical AI market. In this way, its competitive strengths and its narrative came together.

Agenda Setting Is Part of Management

How important is leadership that detects signals of rapid change first, gives new phenomena a name, interprets them through an organization’s own experience and reasoning, and connects them to important decisions and actions? “How should we describe our company and CEO?” “How do we build our reputation and establish what we stand for?” These are questions companies are asking with increasing frequency.
One of the first things I learned in an introductory course in communications theory as a journalism student was agenda-setting theory. It holds that when mass media repeatedly emphasize a particular issue, audiences come to perceive that issue as more important. The key point is that media have a greater influence on which issues people consider important than on their actual opinions about those issues. In the AI era, entrepreneurs seeking to open up new fields and sources of growth and secure talent now also have a role in agenda-setting.
Throughout Korea’s corporate history, running a business and addressing social problems have been treated as strictly separate activities. There was a belief that it was wiser to keep a distance from government, avoid regulation, and quietly focus on business, so companies deliberately avoided agenda-setting. In an era when AI is transforming everything, however, the role of entrepreneurs is expanding. If companies that experience change most quickly cannot present a new order and new agendas first, they will inevitably fall behind institutionally and culturally. Companies cannot do everything, but they can send signals to society. That is why the agenda for educating AI talent proposed by SK Chairman Tae-won Chey is timely and fresh. Perhaps this is because it offers companies, countries, and individuals alike a way forward in the AI era. It is a matter of survival.

Own Your Self-Definition

There is no single way to describe a company or CEO. Agenda IP is an important link connecting leadership and business with branding, reputation, and a devoted following among stakeholders. Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), described Norway’s sovereign wealth fund by saying, “We discovered oil twice. Once underground, and once in financial markets.” By defining the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund as a “wealth pipeline” for current and future generations, he claimed agenda ownership for that model.
Corporate communications, too, need to evolve in ways that make them IP in their own right. MrBeast, the world’s biggest YouTuber, has said that his goal is not to make the best-produced video, but to make “the best YouTube video possible.” He gave a precise definition of the business he was in. Corporate branding and an entrepreneur’s persona, too, form a distinctive world connected by ideas—an IP in its own right.
The value created through self-definition leads to the question of who owns that value. Dolly Parton was an artist and entrepreneur who sought to retain ownership and control of the value she created and expanded it into IP and businesses, opening up new markets. Parton, who died in August 2026, established a company in 1966 at the age of 20 with her uncle and songwriting partner Bill Owens, and began holding the rights to her songs directly. When Elvis Presley wanted to record her signature song “I Will Always Love You,” she refused when asked for a share of the copyright. She chose ownership of the song over the wider recognition a superstar's recording could bring. She later used income from her music to expand into business ventures, creating a virtuous cycle linking IP, cash flow, equity, business, and brand value.
Taylor Swift took this model further. Following a dispute over the master recordings of her earlier albums, she re-recorded them as “Taylor’s Version,” mobilizing her fan base and narrative to regain economic power from platforms and record companies. While Parton retained control of her IP from the contracting stage, Swift countered the loss of her original rights by re-recording her albums to create new rights, and later regained ownership of the original masters. Control over IP means being able to protect ownership of the value you create and determine its price yourself.
Companies must continually prove themselves in a constantly changing world. They must clearly communicate who they are, making a convincing case for themselves, not only through their products and services but through many other means. Companies, too, are in a sense elected by public opinion and reputation. In the AI era, it is no longer enough for companies and CEOs simply to do good work. A recommended process for achieving this can be structured as follows:
Recognize change before others → Give the change a name → Connect it to your own experience and strengths → Define your role and that of your organization → Prove it through action → Tell your story repeatedly, building it over time → Ultimately secure agenda ownership and create your own IP. Ultimately, what remains for companies and leaders are the scenes and stories through which they have defined themselves.

The bard’s lines recur in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, currently in theaters. “A Face. A Fleet. A War. A Man. A Thought. A Trick. A trick to break the walls of Troy, and burn it screaming to the ground.” “The stories of Troy will only be sung.”