Samsung's Way of Innovation

The July 3, 2006 issue of Business Week has a story on how innovation happens at Samsung. Samsung created a Value Innovation Program and have identified key brainstorming practices.

The following quotes should give you an idea how they go about solving problems. One key tenet: each project works against a fixed deadline. Another one: they bring together everyone at the beginning to thrash out differences.

Find that perfect balance of cost, innovation, and technology that makes a product great.

Every step of the way, team members drew what Samsung calls "value curves." These are graphs that rank various attributes such as picture quality and design on a scale of 1 to 5, from outright bad to excellent.

The story also suggests that it is not enough to look at a competitor's product and replicate it. In today's competitive world a company has to redo its culture to stay in a leadership position and be able to release one great product after another.