“Lee Kun-hee, the chairman of Samsung, was a master of careful, cautious and shrewd decision-making,” says Geoffrey Cain, writing a book about the empire. He was suffering from lung cancer when he made “the incredibly risky decision in 1983 to enter semiconductors,” Cain goes on. “It worked. This allowed Samsung to turn Korea into a Republic of Samsung.”

Read more about the Samsung’s founder family and their third-generation long managementat Forbes