BUSN20016 Project: Analyzing Samsung's Sustainable Business Innovation

This project delves into the principles and practices of sustainable business development, with a specific focus on innovation. The study examines how businesses can minimize negative impacts and create value for customers, investors, and the environment, particularly in light of increasing environmental concerns. The project uses Samsung as a case study, concentrating on its wearable technology products to analyze innovation stages, business models, and external factors such as locational, market, and competitive influences. The assignment explores the stages of innovation, including insight, problem identification, solution development, and business model creation, highlighting various methodologies like stage gate process, lean start-up, design thinking, and scrum. The project also examines Samsung's background, its focus on electronics and wearable products, and the sustainability aspects of these products. Additionally, the project considers external factors that affect innovation and sustainable development, such as locational and spatial elements, market dynamics, competition, and the role of networks. This project provides a comprehensive overview of how businesses can integrate innovation and sustainability for long-term success.

Running Head: SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
This paper aims to study the various processes and practices of sustainable
development in business by methods of innovation. The process of sustainable business
development concerns with the idea of developing a business with minimum negative
impacts and creation of value for both, the customers, investors as well as the environment.
With the alarming rise in the climatic conditions, there has been a necessity of an integrated
government policy system for innovation practices. A popular term that is under use these
days is ‘de-carbonization of the economy’ (Global Banking & Finance Review, 2019).
However, in order to maximize the gains from the capital invested, the companies can devise
innovation practices with an added incentive to restore the nature or environment. The chosen
organization to study the aspect of innovation and look into the sustainable development of
that project is Samsung. The product chosen is a wearable item, driven by technology and
sustained by the production of health benefits. Sustainable development is a kind of
philosophy that requires the participation of every being in the global economy, consisting of
the consumers and the government (Welford, 2013). Further, the paper discusses on how the
various stages of innovation help in increasing the value of an idea or proposition.
Discussion
The process of innovation depends on a number of factors, divided into different
stages. These different stages of innovation consists of —
 Insight — The process of insight aims to search for innovative potentials and find
some potentially innovative ideas for evaluation (Dodgson, 2018). An opportunity,
newly discovered to enhance the process of innovation is the innovation potential.
The innovation potential comprises of the following —
1. Problem associated with customers

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2. Unsatisfied customer
3. Technical solutions, which are new
4. Possibility of a new market.
 Problem — A better understanding of the situation enables one to deal with the
problems that occurs in reality as well as those, which have a potentiality for the
same. For products and gadgets, wear and tear of the item is a major drawback that
comes with time and advancement in technology. With more innovations and
advancements, the age of a product dies down in the competitive market. However,
the germination of an idea depends on the potential of an innovation or its
requirement (Furr & Dyer, 2014). This can be in the requirement of a new solution,
service or product.
 Solution — The solution is usually dependent on the real life variables and situations
of the market. It depends on the three aspects of customers and their problems,
possibility of a solution and the aspect of solution. Solution depends on a series of
factors that involves the market requirements, chances of competition and product
differentiation, risk as well as feasibility and market potential, that is, market
attractiveness or size. Studying the needs of the customers and analyzing their
importance besides fulfilling those and meeting up with the customer problems is
essential.
 Business Model — It helps in framing a proper structure for the business. It helps in
the process of ideation, concept development, looking at the barriers present in the
market as well as the resolutions provided. Depending on the innovation and stages of
innovation, different models are developed to design the thinking process as:
1. Stage gate process: A stage gate process, also known as the phase gate
process or waterfall process is used the domain of project management,

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where the project concerns new product development, business change,
process improvement or any software development. Forecasts and
information availability during that time like business analysis, risk
analysis or other relevant data, guide the decision making process at
this time (Furr & Dyer, 2014). The various phases that the traditional
phase gate comprises of the five main phases, known as the scoping
phase gate, building business phase, development phase, testing and
validation phase and finally, the launch phase (PMO Perspectives
Blog, 2019). These phases aim to provide a quality output, supported
by a business rationale and an action plan.
2. Lean start-up: This method provides a scientific approach in teaching
how to drive and steer a start-up in order to preserve and
simultaneously, grow the business with the maximum available
acceleration. This approach principally aims at the development of new
products.
3. Design Thinking: This process of prototyping and examining the
insights before applying them enables to pose fewer risks besides
providing powerful implications of designing. It employs strategies to
efficiently target the achievements by encouraging innovations at every
level for small-scale businesses and start-ups, which functions with
lower capital and investment opportunities (Furr & Dyer, 2014)..
4. Scrum: It involves a small team with a lead, known as the Scrum
Master, whose primary job is to remove obstacles from the paths of
those teams who are completing their tasks. Thus, it is a project
management approach, which provides quick development besides

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testing a strategy or work process, especially when in a small team
(Nutcache, 2019). This method of project management is usually
termed as ‘Agile Project Management’.
Company Chosen – Samsung
Company Background
Samsung, considered a multinational brand, composes of many forms of businesses.
A South Korean company, Samsung has its headquarters in Samsung Town, Seoul. The
Company emphasizes most of its business under the brand name of the Samsung, which is
considered the largest business conglomerate in South Korea, and one of the biggest
businesses in the world (Chang, Zhang and Xiong 2019). The company was founded in the
year of 1938. The foundation of the company is laid upon trading background. The company
initially have been trading in sectors like processing of food, insurances, securities, textiles
and retails. Later, the company enters the business of electronics manufacturing and
telecommunication. The company also had a primary background in shipbuilding industries
and construction industry. The company have been segmenting in various sectors of business
under the brand name of Samsung. With the recent development in the electronics industry,
Samsung have been incorporating their business in globalizing most of their activities in the
electronic development sector, where, major manufacturing of semi-conductors and mobiles
phones are done. It became one of the most important sector of generating revenue for the
conglomerate company (Song and Park 2018). With the recent estimations, the company has
been considered as the 6th largest in the position of brand value.
With the increase of electronic market, Samsung have been generating most of its
resources in the development in the electronic sector. Samsung electronics is the part of the
brand Samsung, which was formally known as Samsung electric industries. The Company is

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a public company, accounting 70 percent of the revenue. The Company is considered to be
the largest manufacturer of consumer electronics and semiconductors by its revenue. The
Company has its major development in electronic components like lithium-ion batteries, flash
memory devices and semiconductor chips. The major clients of the Company are Apple,
HTC, Sony and Nokia. The company has its distinction in the manufacturing of devices such
as smartphones and mobile phones. Afterwards, the company had major success with the
development of its galaxy smartphones line-ups. The company also deals in electronic
devices like tablets, computers, phablets and others. These are specified and powered by the
Android Operating System, which is famous as galaxy tab collection. Other notable
collection in the electronic departments of the company are the Samsung galaxy note
collection, the A series. (Song and Park 2018) The organization also have a major
development in wearable products like Samsung gears and smart watches.
Wearable products
Samsung gears are considered to be the line of wearable products, which are
manufactured and maintained by Samsung electronics. The first device which was
manufactured by Samsung was named as Samsung Galaxy gear. It was considered to be the
first generation smart-watches (Wolos et al. 2015). The model was announced in the year
2013. After the hit of the device in the electronics market, the company have expanded its
sector and have been manufacturing various series of gears like smart watches, fitness bands
and ear-buds.
In the recent years, the company has launched new smart watches, fitness gear and
ear-buds under name of Samsung Galaxy, in fact, switching the brand into the series name
only.

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The series of smart watches manufactured by company consist of variety of watches
like Samsung galaxy gear, Samsung gear 2, Samsung gear live, Samsung gear S, Samsung
gear S2, Samsung gear S3 and Samsung gear sports.
In the series, Samsung galaxy is the first generation smart watch, which was
announced in the year of 2013. Due to the technological limitation at that time, the watch
does not has as much as specification modern day watches have (Akana et al. 2018). The
watch was initially released with in-build android operating system, with the version Kit-
Kat. The watch had a specified AMOLED display in it, with storage of 4 GB and RAM of
512 MB. The watch had a huge success in the market, which in fact made validation for the
company for manufacturing more watches in the line.
Most of the other smart watches in the line was made with respect to the modern
specification of the modern upgrades in the line. The watches have been made with all the
latest specifications, which would allow the user to answer calls and text message to contacts
with the help of Bluetooth connectivity with the phones.
Other varieties of wearable products, manufactured by the company are fitness gears
and ear-buds.
Fitness bands, which is also classified as the activity tracker, are smart wristbands,
which have in-build tracking or heart rate meter, calories meter and blood pressure meter.
The fitness band keeps a record of the steps that are taken by the person wearing the band
(Armstrong John and De Bono 2015). The series of fitness bands which is made by Samsung
are named as Samsung Gear Fit, Samsung Gear Fit 2 and Fit 2 Pro.
Ear-bands are the future of earphones, which would initially would be replacing
earphones. The wearable device could be accessed by activating the Bluetooth feature of the
device and paring it with a smartphone.

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Sustainability of the Wearable products
With the recent development of technology, wearable products are being a top most
priority for many electronic manufacturing and electronic companies. The rising trend with
wearable gadgets have raised the question of sustainability of the product.
It could be assumed the wearable products have a clear sustainability goal, which not
only is user friendly, but also helps with maintaining the sustainability of the product. It
would also be helpful for the customers for maintaining their style and comfort for the eco-
friendly design of wearable products. Most of the wearable manufacturing company have
been maintaining the sustainability of the environment as well as their customers.
External Factors of Innovation and Sustainable Development
In addition to the internal factors, discussed above that involves technicalities of
project management and innovation procedures, there are other factors, external to the
situation. According to Dodgson (2018), this includes the following factors:
 Locational and Spatial factors: The Spatial or locational factor is primary as it
influences the decision-making processes and the activities, undertaken by the
business. This helps to position the organization properly in a definite value chain that
is of global nature. The activities of offshoring as well as outsourcing is also
dependent on the firm positioning.
 Markets: The main product produced by the firm determines its market power and
barriers to entry. The geographical positioning of the market as well as the type of
customers that the firm is serving to, like governments (B2G), customers (B2C) or
other businesses (B2B) (Dodgson, 2018). Identifying the primary consumers as well
as identification of influences on the consumers in order to undergo innovation also

8SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
matters. The other major factor is competition that makes a major impact on the
market to create a substantial influence on the process of innovation.
 Networks and Knowledge flows: The awareness about the product and industry
through data helps in a better investment. The market knowledge and situations that
guide framing policies and regulations aid in responding appropriately, which aims to
maximize profit and lowers the rate of mistakes or unavoidable situations.
 Public policy: Public policies, framed by the government aim to protect the rights of
the buyers and consumers in the economic structure of the State (Furr & Dyer, 2014).
The regulations on product markets like taxation, tariffs, price-ceilings, subsidies,
employment and labor market norms, intellectual property rights, immigration,
corporate governance, environment as well as health and society are guiding factors
of the policy formations. Data collection, surveys and administrative records support
the policy making or regulation formations in addition to the above factors.
 The Natural Environment and Society: Industrial activities and the toxic wastes
like e-wastes, which are of radioactive nature, are produced in large numbers by this
industry. This severely affects the environment. As a result, depiction of Specific
Absorption Rate (SAR) value is to be made public, based on government
regulations. It also sets bars to clearing the wastes, disposed by the factories by
making it free from the toxic chemicals before disposal, reducing the use of plastics
and using more of biodegradable products (Russel, 2017).
Conclusion
The innovation process require plans that are innovative, cost-effective and
technologically viable. The aim of an innovation process or business development measure is
to maximize the profits gained from the returns. The integration process in a business or
producing a diverse range of goods can enhance this (Tidd & Bessant, 2018). Targeting a

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wide spectrum of customers also accelerates this process of profit maximization. However, a
sustainable form of development plan is more welcomed that aims to work in a holistic
environment by delivering what the customers want, at an affordable price, without
disrupting the environment. The use of gadgets, their longevity, product decay and
radioactive and e-wastes produced in this industry acts as an essential guiding factor to this
industry. Using business development software allows better analysis with frequent or regular
checks from the operations’ point of view. Thus, the paper concludes on the note that every
innovation process requires a strategic approach to maximize its profit through sustainable
and technologically advanced methods.

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