Who invented samsung

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For any issues related to customer service, please go to Customer Support page for assistance. For media inquiries, please click Media Contact to move to the form. Menu open Search open Nation choice page link. Search close Search X Search. Sort by Sort by Recent Popular. The authors describe how the company created a committed, resourceful corps of designers who overcame internal resistance by deploying the same tools they use in pursuing innovation: empathy, visualization, and experimentation in the marketplace.

Samsung Electronics knew that in order to become a top brand, it needed a design-focused culture that would support world-class innovation. Managers who were invested in the status quo had to be persuaded to buy in to idealized visions of the future. The company built a corps of designers with a capacity for strategic thinking and the tenacity that enabled them to overcome resistance by deploying the same tools—empathy, visualization, and market experimentation—that they use in pursuing innovation.

Its marketers set prices and introduced features according to what original-equipment manufacturers wanted. Its engineers built products to meet prescribed price and performance requirements. The few designers working for the company were dispersed in engineering and new-product units, and individual designers followed the methods they preferred.

In a company that emphasized efficiency and engineering rigor, the designers had little status or influence. By any measure, his goal was achieved. Samsung now has more than 1, designers.

The company has built an impressive record on design, garnering more awards than any other company in recent years. The bold designs of its televisions often defy conventional style. With its Galaxy Note series, Samsung introduced a new category of smartphone—the phablet—which has been widely copied by competitors. Design is now so much a part of its corporate DNA that top leaders rely on designers to help visualize the future of the entire company.

It has been a bumpy journey. Shifting to an innovation-focused culture without losing an engineering edge is not a simple matter. Suppliers must be brought on board. Managers invested in the status quo must be persuaded to buy in to idealized visions of the future.

A risk-averse culture must learn to accommodate experimentation and occasional failure. The corps has helped institute policies and structures that embed design thinking in all corporate functions and provide a framework for reevaluating products in the face of dramatic technological change. By the first quarter of profits were recovering but were still below prior-year levels.

Nevertheless, the big picture is one of impressive innovation and marketplace success. In Lee had launched an initiative to integrate Western practices on strategy, HR, merit pay, and design into the conglomerate, but he had been unsatisfied with subsequent progress. To fuel its design revolution, the company could have sought first-rate expertise from outside.

That certainly would have been the fastest approach, and a number of senior managers pushed to have an internationally known Korean designer take over the design function. As part of its investment in developing an organization-wide design capability, Samsung brought in faculty members from a well-known art college and created three training programs. In the s, Samsung began to explore the cell phone industry, and released its own mobile phone to the South Korean public in This problem continued for Samsung for some years to come, with some products being known for poor performance and quality.

It is said that company management frequently considered pulling out of the cell phone market because of these issues. Though Samsung isn't the only company to have faced struggles in the mobile phone industry, with brands like LG and Amazon failing entirely in such ventures, it is one of the few mobile phone companies that exceeded expectations and made it to the absolute top of the market. There was one key decision that made this possible. It was not until , some years after Samsung's initial cell phone launch, that it was decided Samsung needed a new business strategy for its future.

Lee Kun-hee, chairman of Samsung Electric Industries, was the individual who pioneered this change. It was decided that the company would focus more on modern and up-and-coming tech, instead of the less coveted and successful products they were selling at the time. Such products were shelved, and the company invested in new technologies. In the early years of the twenty-first century, Samsung continued to grow and expand as a tech company, eventually passing its rival, Sony, to become the twentieth-largest consumer company in the world.

It also secured its place as the most popular consumer brand in general. The public received the new phone well, with people comparing it to other successful Android-powered smartphones, such as the Nexus One and HTC Desire. Since the release of the Galaxy S, Samsung has created dozens of smartphones, each one outshining the last with new system updates and specs.

Some releases reached the absolute heights of success, including the Galaxy Note Edge. Samsung expanded into even more fields in the s, including petrochemicals. It also started making washing machines, refrigerators, and microwaves. Samsung began to focus even more on electronics in the s. This was also the decade Samsung started exporting more of its products to North America. The company sells chemical products in Korea. In the early and mids, Samsung started producing memory and hard drives for use in personal computers.

That's still a big part of Samsung's business today. According to company legend, one of Samsung's first mobile phones did not work when it came out in When Samsung's chairman Kun-Hee Lee found out, he visited the factory where the phones were made and reportedly had the entire inventory burned.

After that initial slip up, Samsung began taking mobile more seriously by the late s. It released one of its first Internet-ready phones in Mobile would eventually grow into Samsung's most profitable business. In the late s, Samsung made more advances in television.