“Kevin Lee calls it ‘Steve Jobs Syndrome.’ As the former head of product strategy and user experience design at Samsung Design America, Lee watched as the $100 billion Korean tech giant wrote check after check to countless Western design firms to develop future products for the Korean company,” Mark Wilson reports for Fast Company. “The designers would dig in their heels, refusing to budge on their grand idea or see how it might fit into Samsung’s vast production line. And Samsung management would either discard the idea entirely, or water it down so much that the product became another meaningless SKU in the hundreds of products Samsung sells today.”
“During his 18-month tenure with the company, Samsung failed to launch the next big thing. It wasn’t a lack of good ideas, or Samsung’s stinginess in hiring good designers, he argues,” Wilson reports. “It was a combination of problems — cultural, managerial, and structural — that prevented concepts from making it to market as real Samsung products. Most of all, though, he blames the Western designer’s mentality—the Silicon Valley archetype of stubborn genius that today’s innovators hold so dear. He blames Steve Jobs Syndrome.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The chaebol makes vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens, and backhoes. Forget blaming Steve Jobs, Samsung fatally lacks focus. And the sharpness of focus required to beat Apple at the game they perfected doesn’t exist. Regardless of the number or size of the checks they write, some unfocused, bureaucratic Korean vacuum cleaner/backhoe company isn’t going to out-work and out-design Jony Ive, Marc Newson and the rest of Apple’s design team in phones, wearables, and computers.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ottawa Mark” for the heads up.]
True narcissism. Blame it on someone else. It’s “the designers” fault (or maybe it’s just that “the customers just don’t get how ‘great’ we designed things”).
Better that Samdung should be clueless and wallow in their ignorance… Apple will continue to rise supreme and they will be left as nothing more than a minor footnote in the history of tech…
lol what a bunch of losers
Laughable nonsense.
What an UTTER pile of old cobblers!
It wasn’t a lack of good ideas, or Samsung’s stinginess in hiring good designers, he argues,” Wilson reports. “It was a combination of problems — cultural, managerial, and structural — that prevented concepts from making it to market as real Samsung products. Most of all, though, he blames the Western designer’s mentality—the Silicon Valley archetype of stubborn genius that today’s innovators hold so dear. He blames Steve Jobs Syndrome.”
BWAHAHAHAHA! Blame the rival you ripoff and wannabe. It doesn’t get more stupid. (O_o)
Face it Samsung: You’re soooo screwed. And you soooo deserve it. 😆
This isn’t the Steve Jobs Syndrome, this is the Fake Steve Jobs Syndrome where “design” is seen as a veneer instead of an integral part of the product development process.
The fact that Samsung relies heavily on outside design studios says it all.
As most design comes from these western designers he so denigrates he may well have unwittingly hit a bullseye of an explanation. Design education here is about freeing the mind encouraging that rebellious streak anathema to the eastern way of doing things. Because there are always compromises to be made in design doesn’t mean that design itself has to be compromised and that is something that the likes of SAMSUNG will never understand.
It is the exact opposite of the “Steve Jobs Syndrome”.
Steve did not go out and hire two dozen different design studios, he always relied on a very few people in his career (first Harmut Esslinger and then Jonny Ive), which gave the product lines very cohesive design languages. Steve also would not let the designers dictate to him what was best. If HE thought something was shit he would tell them so and make them go back to the studio to make it better.
“Samsung’s collectivist corporate structure won’t gamble $10 million to bring a bold, unproven product to market”
THAT says it all. Samsung does not do intensive or true R & D. The “PROVEN” (product in the) Market Forces, (i.e. already developed by someone else,) is what they target as their product list.
Samsung management are not promoted from design or engineering, I can say with certainty.
When Steve showed the iPhone in Jan. 07, Samsung called up at least one Western design firm and wanted a design for an iPhone copy in 6 weeks. The design firm replied to Samsung the the iPhone took years to design and you can’t do it in 6 weeks.
You are right but there is more to that. Samsung is a the epitome of Korean Chaebol. They suffer from cronyism typically from people from the same family, school, geographic area. Almost never the right person for the job just the person with the best family ties or connections. Of course there are many more issues than that.
Samsung recruits most of its managerial staff from AA meetings, meth houses and asylums for the criminally insane. Anyone who can suppress feelings of self-guilt through the copious use of intoxicating substances.
They . . . just won’t do what I say.
That’s why I keep writing them check after check.
Or maybe they did so what Samsung said and that’s what the problem is.