What Makes Samsung An Innovative Company?

Recently, a flood of TV commercials and newspaper ads have been showing us new Samsung smartphones in an attempt to push people to purchase a new phone.

There are critics of Samsung who argue that its success is mostly due to copying and then adjusting the innovations of others. There is a good deal of truth in this, especially around the early Galaxy designs. But Samsung is a global leader and especially renowned for its screen technology, TVs, batteries, and chip design.

We know that within Apple when a project gets to a critical stage, the company assigns three teams to handle its development, and each team competes against the other with emphasis on design and customer experience.

What does Samsung do in comparison? How does it line up against this American master? Does it have distinct, innovative ideas that are good enough to compete against Apple? Developments at Samsung in the late 1990s and early 2000s convinced the company that they could adopt a systematic approach to innovation, and it seems their current success has derived from this approach.

In the late 1990s, Samsung was able to obtain a source of cheap scientific expertise in the former Soviet Union. Samsung has had a close relationship with the Russian Academy of Science (RAS) since then, and has spent a considerable amount of time on the IT department in Russia. In return, Samsung devices are made quickly available in Russia.

Has the Russian connection shown concrete value for Samsung? Right now Samsung is working with the RAS on 3D projection and displays, and the company has spared a huge budget to employ hundreds of talented Russian university researchers. The message is clear for Apple and Google – get used to it because Samsung is not only on a roll, it has enough talented people to keep pushing.