This is just weird: The Korea Times reports that Samsung has adopted Google as its role model, because of, well, Google Sky:
Google’s newly launched virtual telescope service might have impressed Samsung Electronics chief executive as he looked for a way to explain the reforms taking place in the company.
Yun Jong-yong, CEO and vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, said Monday in his monthly speech that Google Sky, a free navigational package of celestial images, was a product of a “creative corporate culture” – a theme that he and Chairman Lee Kun-hee has been stressing all year.
“Vice chairman Yun stressed that the company should create new values with unique products and services that can fulfill the customers’ potential needs, and he took Google Earth’s Sky service as an example of this,” the company said in a release on Monday.
Unless Samsung is aiming to get out of the gadget-building game and into the information-organizing game, I’d seriously recommend looking up to Apple, not Google. Not surprisingly, Apple and Google collaborate as equals (See Google Maps for iPhone), whereas Samsung is just being starstruck, and fixating on the wrong star to boot.
Actually, this makes good sense to me sat at my desk here in Seoul. For company anything like Apple to exist in the Korean business environment is still utterly unimaginable, so really any step toward or even mention of a “creative corporate culture” is worthwhile. Hmm, now I wonder if Mr Lee is au fait with Metropix…
If companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, have demonstrated anything in the regard, and that other companies should take note of — is to become your own company, and do everything your way.
It often amazes me that company executives will look for a model, yet, in that process they fail to observe the obvious — thus failing in the unique opportunity they have. To become something — well — of their own making.