14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung has long been criticized by reviewers and customers alike for its tendency to launch boring and uninspiring looking smartphones.
More than that, the company hasn't shied away from using plastic on its flagship products, making them look cheap and as far as possible from the high-end spectrum.
In an extensive interview with Fast Code Design, Samsung’s former Head of Product Strategy, Kevin Lee, explained that the company’s inability to bring out innovative products can be blamed on its corporate nature, not on the lack of good design ideas floating out there.
Changing a dogma at Samsung is not an easy job
He explains that he has seen amazing ideas over the years, the kind that have the potential to revolutionize the stagnating mobile market, but the problem lies in the fact that it’s not that easy to squeeze such products into a market that is pre-set to accept a particular type of smartphones.
Samsung’s business model prevents it from taking a $10 / €8 million risk on a bold product, because it has a better chance of making profit by releasing a host of revised products that take advantage of a select few new features.
Lee talks about his experience working for Samsung and calls it a very frustrating one because his most creative ideas just didn't get through.
“It felt like I was giving crown jewels to people who wouldn't produce them,” he says.
He goes on to mention that working with companies from the US and Europe is a lot different, as designers are given more power and their ideas have a better chance of seeing the light of day at some point or another.
Samsung phone designs suck, blame the “Steve Jobs Syndrome”
This Western mentality is called the “Steve Jobs Syndrome” - which entails that innovation comes from a single stubborn individual who won’t renounce his/her ideas, instead of a group of designers working together as a team.
We're reminded of a scene from Steve Jobs' biography describing how the late Apple boss famously threw a fit when he returned to Apple in 1997.
Jobs believed his team members should concentrate on developing four great products and not lose focus trying to make a bigger than necessary lineup of devices. And he wouldn't have it another way.
Samsung’s business model, on the other hand, is based on Korean culture, which is in itself hierarchical, Confucius-based and group-minded and not individualistic. Managers have to report to other managers, who in turn report to their bosses and so on, the chain goes on forever.
So this is the reason why when an innovative design comes at Samsung, it will most likely be thrown out the window or get lost making its way up through the extensive chain of command.
