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Young Soha Corporate President and Chief Strategy Officer of Samsung Electronics,
welcome to The Industrial's Dilemma at Stanford University
>> Thanks for having me again.
>> Great to have you here.
Tell us a bit about how the business has changed in the eight years since you
joined the company.
>> Well, business is always changing but I think really last ten years
we've seen drastic changes and part of that is really to do with the mobility and
cloud that are really changing the way not only we're using for
social media but also the way we conduct our business.
I think the b2b business tools all the way to consumer experience is changing
because of the way we are using our supercomputers in our hand 24
by 7 and all the business models that we known that we have known or
disrupted and that's really the big change we see it.
>> So when we think of mobility for Samsung, that means two things,
not only phones like you talked about, but the automotive industry and
a few years ago, Samsung made its acquisition of Harmon.
How's that going and
what have you learned in the three years since you acquired the company?
>> So mobility, let me just give you some one background and then talk about Harmon.
So mobility basically we are really a no company, right?
So we have a number one market share in the world for
number of phones that are sold, over 350 million phones a year.
As a Samsung brand, we have over 2 billion phones that are in store around the world,
so that really has a tremendous ridge to consumers around the world.
And that really helped us to become a Global brand, but
also we provide 5g network now.
So in many ways we are really betting the future of network is going to be 5g.
And Samsung is behind the merge of networks like what Verizon has done with
their fixed wireless deployment in the US and Korea, Japan and
others that happening as well.
And then I think the other part is that we also develop semiconductors for
mobile community, from radios to
processors to memories that are pretty much older phones out there.
>> When you think about talking about Harmon a little bit about the movement of
the mobility in the car space, why did you make the acquisition and
what did you learned in the last year?
>> So three years ago, in fact, it is exactly almost three years ago, right?
It's in two months it'll get to three years ago.
There are two primary reasons why we are called Harman.
One is really around automation.
The other is really around audio.
And as you know, Harman is an iconic brand that spans for
70 years from JBL brand all the way to Mark Levinson to AKG,
the Infinity, almost to the brands that really build what Harmon is,
it's the number one audio company in the world.
Without video display, we said that audio is highly complementary.
So that's one position of really providing
experienced consumers that are complete audio with a complete video.
And then on top of that, we really believe the future of automotive
is going to be based on the smartphone technology that we experienced,
that are moving into our automobile as an extension of our 24 by 7 experience.
So if you look at tomorrow's car,
you will see the 5G radios, you see the whole bunch of batteries, and
whole bunch of sensors, and whole bunch of UI/UX entertainment.
In many ways,
a lot of the technology will come from the mobile community we know about.
So in many ways for Samsung,
the synergy would be bringing the technology we developed
into vertical market like automotive and give consumers much better experience.
So they are connected 24/7,
using from mobility as a service from your home all the way to your work.
>> If you think about Samsung as a large, Global company knew the technology
talked about semiconductor manufacturing, communications, storage, entertainment,
how do you think about sharing technology across the different groups in Samsung,
and how do you deal with it on a geographic basis?
>> So in a large company, it sounds like a great idea to share.
But as you know, large companies has many silos.
It is about designing the organization structure and managing the complexity and
overcoming those barriers and it's it's not that easy, I'll tell you.
Because if you think about each business, whether it's $100 billion mobile business,
or it's $80 billion consumers semiconductor business, or
$50 billion consumer business, or $10 billion Harman business, they all have
management, they all have business, they all have focus, they have consumers.
So how do you communicate and share among these teams are one of the challenges and
making sure we don't reinvent at the same time bring new ideas quickly among our
teams.
So sometimes we create sensor organisations like our AI centre
around the world to support globally,
the idea is supporting all of the initiatives around AI.
But just is an example of some critical areas that we have to share equally,
then we will embark on global corporate initiatives
>> So centralize where it makes sense and
give autonomy where it also makes sense.
>> Absolutely.
>> If you look forward the next decade, what do you think will be the biggest
areas of change that will impact Samsung and Samsung's customers?
>> Well I think as I mentioned earlier, I think the whole area is going from
what I call physical products to now it's about experience products.
And if you think about, our mindset in the past was the product which in the centre,
and we tried to develop experience around that.
But i think now we have to be controlling the centre and put products around those,
so that we have a consistent experience because they're all mobile,
they're all connected.
We need to give a consistent exprience and you have to be open, you have to be able
to use a bunch of other tools, product that can be able to take advantage of.
So open equals system will be very critical part of initiative.
>> When you think about Samsung historically,
it's been a product company, manufacturing products, chips and the like.
And yet in this world where the customers in the center, hardware and software will
become increasingly important, how do you bring those capabilities inside of
the organization when maybe those skill sets don't exist today?
>> So in first part I would say that even today's product,
if you look at mobile phone, outsell 80% where engineering is already software,
because without software you cannot build that ecosystem,
you cannot provide the kind of layers.
But I think the future is about how do you take advantage of different software
solution, capabilities and be able to create a convergent experience.
So convergent means such as what you know in one area, but
it is really about combining skills from different groups.
I mean you can really see example would be like health.
Today health isn't just health by itself, IT will impact health and
health will get changed because of IT technology.
Gene sequencing would not be possible by based solely so
medical breakthrough in biological breakthrough.
It has the benefit of optical technology, storage technology and computer technology
that enable to encode human gene sequencing, 2003 or 4 time frame, right?
>> Last question for you.
You’re based here in Silicon Valley.
How do you think between building that bridge between Silicon Valley and
back to Suwan in Korea, where not only is time difference,
there’s cultural difference, there’s geographic distance.
How do you build that bridge?
>> So it is a challenge because of the distance,
also because of the culture, and because also the way of the gravity edge.
So you have to really bring bright ideas that can impact and
they can get their attention.
And we need to figure out how to go from country road to highway of idea sharing,
and that's the challenge.
And we do it not only throw our own ideas, but really bring external ideas
that are bright and really the innovative people from Israel, to Austria,
to Germany, to Silicon Valley, let them all be in part of that ecosystem.
And I think building that ecosystem, building high way is part of our mission.
>> Young Corporate President and Chief Strategy Officer for Samsung Electronics.
Thank you so much for coming back to Stanford.
It's always great to have you back on campus.
Thanks very much and looking forward to having your class again.
>> Thanks so much.
>> Thank you
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