Samsung comes of age

You don’t have to hang around Samsung Electronics for long before the word “innovation” is mentioned. Samsung people love to use it; I am not sure you can even have a chinwag with them without the “i” word cropping up.

Personally, I have never been convinced.

Certainly, Samsung is a well-run company, a zero-to-hero success. It is the world’s biggest electronics company by revenue. It boasts massive cross-sector economies of scale, enabling a growing range of synergies and convergences. It is a brilliant manufacturer, legendary for its speed of production: Perhaps no other company can accelerate ideas from the drawing board and into customers’ hands faster.

But is it truly “innovative?”

A number of international publications and pundits think so. After all, it is the world’s biggest maker of memory chips, LCDs, televisions, cell phones, smartphones and (no doubt) a truckload of widgets and gadgets that have escaped my attention.

Yet while Samsung makes and markets these things with tremendous efficiency, it has not actually invented any of them.

The counter argument to that is, “Well, Samsung is filing enough patents to sink a supertanker.”

OK. But for what? A slightly faster semiconductor; a slightly bigger screen; a slightly thinner display.

This “incremental innovation” ― the process of making small improvements to existing products ― is important. Samsung (and other Korean companies) do it very well. But it is not the Holy Grail.

That would be “blue ocean” – or, if you prefer, “blue sky” ― innovation: The creation or invention of something radically new, a product category that changes the game (or, indeed, changes the world). This kind of innovation gives a company a first-mover advantage in pricing and boosts brand muscle. In terms of posterity, it grants inventors – be they people or companies ― a place in the history books.

So, with that having been said, I was (pleasantly) gobsmacked to see what Samsung recently rolled out at the recent Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: A bendable LED screen.

This is what I am talking about. I won’t go into the highly promising personal, commercial and military applications of the technology; better qualified writers than I have already done so. The key thing is this is something we have not seen before.

I hope Samsung won’t stop there. And I don’t think it will.

Last year, while doing a feature on Samsung for a global business magazine, I was carted around Samsung’s showroom. Talk about a chamber of wonders: Gadget lovers would pass out in rapture in this place. I am a pathetic late adopter and shameful technophobe ― if I want to operate my DVD player, I summon my daughter ― but even so, two “on the drawing board” products made my lower jaw hit the floor.

One was a simultaneous interpretation device. If Samsung pulls this off, it will be a game changer in global communications, as it could not only be inserted into electronic devices for instant translation of foreign language audio-visual content but would also empower those knackers and dullards – like, for example, your columnist ― who have pretensions to be international citizens but who are too lazy and/or stupid to speak foreign languages fluently.

Goodbye, BabelFish.

The other was a transparent display screen, though that description does not do the product justice. Essentially, it is “programmable glass” (my term). This could obviate TV screens; your TV could be built into your window. A restaurant could have its menu items running across its window; customers could press a button to order before they enter. And a company which covered its facade in this stuff could turn its entire building into a billboard, running brand communications or commercial films.

This could change the face of our cities.

I don’t know if these ideas will make it to market; indeed, the flexible screen is not yet on sale. (Though experts are bullish.) And inventing a new product category is one thing; incubating it, introducing it to the world and making it commercially viable is another. All this is uncharted territory for Samsung. But having made the giant technological leap, I suspect that they will master the marketing challenge.

So, bravo Samsung.

Speaking more broadly, Samsung is Korea’s national flagship, and the time is ripe for top-flight Korean innovation. The economic miracle of the Park Chung-hee days is a distant memory. Korean firms are now established players in international markets but with China storming up the value chain, they can no longer be content with being “me too” manufacturers.

Samsung’s high-profile breakthrough suggests it has come of age. I hope other Korean companies follow them in becoming leaders.

Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk. <The Korea Times/Andrew Salmon>