Managing Products & Brands: A Report on Samsung's Innovation

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Samsung's product innovation strategies, focusing on the Samsung Galaxy smartphone line. It explores the Product Innovation Charter (PIC), strategic focus, new product processes, and portfolio management that have contributed to Samsung's succes...Read More

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Managing Products & Brands
Student’s Name
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
The Product Innovation Charter (PIC): situation assessment & opportunity identification............3
Strategic Focus of the Innovation to Samsung................................................................................5
The new products process................................................................................................................6
The New Product Portfolio/ Strategic fit.........................................................................................6
Reflection of the Degree of Success................................................................................................7
Other associated Factors that Need to be Considered.....................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Managing Products & Brands
Introduction
Continuous improvement and innovation form the basis for the survival of any business
organization. Most organizations rely on the innovation teams to come up with new products that
reflect the changing dimension of the market and at the same time compete with what other
organization are offering. Innovation is a new idea or application of better solutions that meet the
new requirements of the organization (Edison, Ali, & Torkar 2014, p. 1394). The product
development process is the journey that a product goes through from conception to the market.
This entails a series of stages that new products go through beginning from ideation and concept
generation and ends with the introduction of the product to the market.
Samsung is a global leader in the electronics sector and recently entered the mobile
phones words. Today Samsung is known with the Samsung Galaxy line of smart phones that it
continues unleashing in the market every time. Shaughnessy (2013, pp. 4) suggests that Samsung
is one of the innovative companies in the smartphone world due to its TRIZ approach that is used
to develop the direction for new innovation. The company’s recent innovation is the Galaxy line
of smartphones which is continuing to hit the market. This report analyses the Samsung Galaxy
Smart Phone innovation process by developing a PIC for the organization, identifying the goals
of the innovation, new product process and portfolio and appraisal of the degree of success.
The Product Innovation Charter (PIC): situation assessment & opportunity identification.
The PIC is a guide to the development of new products strategy based on the existing
needs of the market. This entails identifying the purpose of the product and how its marketing
elements fit into the general business strategy (Crawford 2008, 6). It contains the elements of
market background, target market, goals and objectives, and special considerations.

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Market background
The development of Samsung Galaxy was based on the changing nature of mobile
phones. This was due to the innovations of Apple to switch from low-margin phones to
smartphones (Madani 2014, p. 25). The company has an established information and mobile unit
that was specifically designed for understanding the trends in the market.
Target market
The advancing changes in the nature of mobile phones are what led to the introduction of
smartphones. As mobile phones started becoming the common medium of communication, there
was the need to develop better forms that served more roles. The quick adoption of mobile
phones means that consumers are willing to easily switch from lower technology to higher
technology in such of information (Kim 2007, 10). This is defined by the company as ABC1
business people aged between twenty-five and forty-four years. The smartphone offers an
alternative especially to the generation X and Y group who were experiencing the revolution of
technology.
Goals and objectives
The main objective as to compete with the number one mobile manufacturer Apple by
developing products that are similar to what it is producing. This is seen in the quick move to
smartphones that followed Apple’s launch of new products. Developing a competing smartphone
was supposed to generate market share for the company.
Special considerations
The need to develop patents so that innovations made by the company can be secured.
This is because Apple has lost some of its innovations to other companies like Samsung because
of failing to patent the innovations early.

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Strategic Focus of the Innovation to Samsung
Samsung is a market leader in the mass market segment where its products are used more
than other competitors in the market. According to Jung (2014, p. 5), Samsung entered the
mobile phone market in 1988 and was forced to develop aggressive strategies to penetrate the
market and at the same time stay relevant to the product line. The company’s strategic
management revolves around creativity, partnership, and talent. This strategy is applied in all the
divisions by diversifying itself through waiting for the market to be established and then
penetrates aggressively.
The Samsung Galaxy line of smartphones was designed to offer a competitive advantage
to the company by offering clients a Samsung experience interface that used the Android system
developed by Google. This product was developed with the aim of penetrating and establishing
command of the market and strategic advantage. Today what the company does is to improve
customer experience by innovating new features on the smartphone and giving it a new name
(Madani 2014, p. 23). The Galaxy brand has been successful in boosting market share for the
company since every new Galaxy line released improves the company’s market share as it
competes with Apple (Samsung 2018, pp. 3). Since it entered the smartphone world, Samsung
threw away lower-margin features since the market was heading towards smartphones. Today,
the phones are strategically designed to aggressively compete in the market.
The new products process
The product development process in the company has been streamlined to four main
stages of understanding the concept, ideating, concept development and concept finalization. The
understanding stage focusses on understanding the existing trends through field research and data
collection to get insights into the user’s perspective. The ideation stage entails generation and

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discussion of the ideas through to determine the idea that might provide innovative solutions
(Simonin 2014, p. 11). The concept development stage is the refining of the ideas generated into
a single defining concept that forms the innovation. This concept is then developed into a
business case of the different business units in the organization. Lastly, the concept finalization
stage is working on the innovation based on the requirements of the business unit (Samsung
2013, pp. 4). Once the product has been developed and customized based on the requirements of
the business unit, it is tested for improvements and then launched.
The New Product Portfolio/ Strategic fit
Kim (2007, p. 9) argues that Samsung uses the layers of advantage strategy to develop its
innovations through continuous expansion of competitive advantage. This is through reverse
orders that allow adding layers of advantage to enter new markets. This is based on waiting for
other leaders to penetrate the market and then taking advantage of the market exploitation. By
narrowing its technology gap that gives room for strategic expansion, the company achieves its
strategic needs of expansion easily. For example, the company started by manufacturing lower-
margin phones but was anticipating the industry to grow by waiting for Apple to invent the
smartphones (Jung & Do-Chong 2016, p. 7). Later, they switched from lower-end mobile phones
to smartphones that led to the innovation of the Samsung Galaxy line. Today, the company is
slowly adding layers of advantage to every Galaxy line that they launch as they wait for any new
changes in the market. This strategy is an advantage for the company since it leads to the
development of new products that have since increased its market share. Further, management
changed the human resource structure to ensure that it reflects its strategic needs. This well-
crafted strategy is the reason behind the growth of the company in the electronics sector.

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Reflection of the Degree of Success
The success of the Samsung Galaxy series is based on both macro and micro advantages
that the company has developed. Since its revolution of the human resource system and the
adjusting of the structure, Samsung has developed internal competencies that have given it a
strategic advantage. From top management to lower level employees, the company has a spirit of
global expansion which seeks to improve its business competitiveness (Kim 2007, p. 4). This has
been achieved through developing of innovative approaches that guide the way the company
operates. On the other hand, the macro environment has not been challenging for the company
since it has managed to overcome competition from other manufacturers. Through the reverse
engineering strategy, the company has been able to penetrate the electronics line while at the
same time expanding its business domain to the recent venture in mobile phones. Therefore,
Samsung remains one of the companies to watch since its global expansion strategy seems to be
working well.
Other associated Factors that Need to be Considered
Despite the achievements that the company has achieved in the area of innovation and
patents, the case of Apple is an indicator that other manufacturers could take the same approach
and steal their patents. Therefore, the company needs to strengthen its innovative strategies to
target young talents and entrepreneurs that will create a better advantage for the company’s
future.
Conclusion
Therefore, Samsung has established itself as one of the leading electronics manufacturers
that is able to overcome all the challenges in the sector. However, management has to focus more

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on penetrating its own markets rather than waiting for others to explore the market and then
penetrating aggressively.

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References
Crawford, M, 2008. Defining the Charter for Product Innovation. Sloan management review,
22(1), pp. 3-12.
Edison, H, Ali, N & Torkar, R, 2014. Towards innovation measurement in the software industry.
Journal of Systems and Software, 86(5), pp. 1390-1407.
Jung, S C, 2014. The Analysis of Strategic Management of Samsung Electronics Company
through the Generic Value Chain Model. nternational Journal of Software Engineering and Its
Appl, 8(12), pp. 133-142.
Jung, U. & Do-Chong, B., 2016. Lessons from the history of Samsung’s SCM innovations: focus
on the TQM perspective. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 27(7).
Kim, R, 2007. Samsung's Competitive Innovation and Strategic Intent for Global Expansion..
Problems and Perspectives in Management, 5(3).
Madani, F, 2014. Samsung's Innovation Strategy in Smart Phones Market. SSRN Electronic
Journal, 10(3) p. 20-31.
Samsung, 2013. Samsung’s Product Innovation Team: How Ideas Becomes Streamlined.
[Online]
Available at: https://news.samsung.com/global/samsungs-product-innovation-team-how-ideas-
becomes-streamlined
Samsung, 2018. Phones that defy barriers; Samsung Galaxy. [Online] available at
https://www.samsung.com/uk/smartphones/
Shaughnessy, H, 2013. What Makes Samsung Such An Innovative Company?. Forbes, 7 March.
Simonin, D, 2014. International Strategy: The Strategy of Samsung Group. Working Paper,
11(4).