Chapter Talks – Design E37 | Mauro Porcini (President & Chief Design Officer Samsung)

You want to be surprised, you want to be engaged, and then you want to bring these products home. You want to have a product that represents you, that is not the same as the one of everybody else. That's why we choose our chairs, our tables, our light in our homes with such care, because we want to define ourselves through these products. The same care we use to pick a car, to choose a car, to choose the color of the car and the trim of the interiors of the car.

But then you buy a TV and they all look the same. Why? Who says it? You buy a phone, they all look the same. Why? So, we need to evolve this. And again, Samsung, before even I arrived, has been experimenting in this way.

Thank you for having me. Yes, you're right. If you take a plane, it will take around 13 hours at least to get there. So, yeah, long distance.

Well, it's very exciting. You know, I'm Italian. I grew up in Italy in a family that didn't travel too much. And then I found myself projected into this global world, moving to the United States, to Minnesota first, to New York after.

I am today both an Italian citizen and officially also an American citizen. And in all these years working with teams all around the world, when I was at PepsiCo I had teams in 18 cities all around the world. Today at Samsung, we have teams in multiple cities, you know, representing every region, every continent of the world. I became somehow what I call a global citizen. You know, I'm not just Italian anymore. I'm not American.

I feel like I belong to the world. And now, if you look at the world in a way, there are few cities that are really very important, very iconic in the way they're shaping culture in the world. New York, for sure, is one of those. Seoul is for sure another one. All the K-pop in music, what they're doing in cinema and movies, cosmetic, retail, obviously consumer electronics, automotive is incredible. Is incredible. So, even though the culture somehow superficially is very different, the Korean culture from the American culture from the Italian culture, I feel anyway part of a city that is like a global piazza that is somehow shaping culture around the world. And this is really, really exciting. On one side, I'm learning new things every day. On the other side, I'm still part of this global conversation I was part of when I was in New York City.

Well, now, absolutely. My kids are born in New York City, so they are American citizens. There is a new law in Italy that because both my wife and myself are both dual citizens, American and Italian, I can't give them the Italian citizenship right now. That is somehow very interesting as a law. But I'm going to be able to do it through my parents. But, you know, they're really, really Italians in their behaviors, in the way, you know, they're making pizza every Sunday as an example. Already, you know, the one is 4 years old, the other one is 1 and 1/2, but they both help mom and dad making pizza on Sunday. There is this, you know, very Italian behaviors and habits and culture. But they're growing up now in Seoul. They're surrounded by kids from Korea and kids from every region of the world. It was like this in New York. It's like this now in the international schools here in Seoul. So, yeah, they're growing like global citizens, and this is something, you know, fantastic, and is a wonderful gift that I think we're giving them. I also have three dogs, and two of them, I mean, I got all of them in New York City, but two of them were born in Korea.

And they got in New York not expecting ever to move to Korea, and then life is unpredictable, and so I brought them back home to wherever it started from them, and that's really, you know, an interesting story.

Yeah, look, my interpretation of the role of Chief Design Officer is the one of a leader that together with his teams is focusing on creating value for people, value for humanity. Not just from a social standpoint, but literally observing human beings, people, users, consumers, customers, whatever you want to call them, and creating something that adds value in their life, a product, a solution, an experience, a brand, a service that is functional, that is beautiful, that is somehow useful, that is meaningful, that helps them in a variety of different ways in what they do.

And then, that's the starting point. Then you reconnect the kind of focus and the kind of intention to the world of business and to the world of technology. So, we put people first, what they desire, what they want, what they need is the first consideration, but then we try to understand how to leverage technology, manufacturing capabilities to create that kind of solution. And if we have them in-house, great. If we don't, we're going to develop them, or eventually you can acquire them or build partnerships with other companies and brands.

And then there is the dimension of business, how can I make money out of it? How can I grow a brand with that kind of approach. So, these are the famous three lenses of design thinking: desirability, feasibility, viability. And this kind of approach can be used and leveraged in any kind of industry, in any corner of the planet, wherever you are. The idea is you start with people and then you understand how to use the other lenses.

With that kind of approach, design in these companies becomes the voice of people, the ambassadors of humanity inside these organizations. And you as a designer connect and talk with people with different kinds of backgrounds, belonging to different kinds of communities, that try to solve similar problems, but with a different lens. So, the business world will put the business lens first, how can I increase revenue, profitability, how can I support my brand? How can I gain market share? And they will put people after, you know, people become a lever, technology is a lever, but my goal is to grow the business.

The people working in R&D, they will start with technology and they will understand how to advance technology, how to change your manufacturing capabilities, how to create patents that are incredible, valuable, defensible. And then from there, they will understand how to build business value and they will understand how through those technologies to serve individuals, human beings. But again, the way I'm positioning design in these companies is really the voice of humanity in the organization and how to build business value, financial value by creating first human value. That's really the kind of interpretation I have for this role of chief design officer.

Look, there is a difference between Samsung and 3M and PepsiCo. 3M and PepsiCo didn't really have an established design capability and they were not leveraging design as a driver of differentiation of the products. One company, 3M, was really tech-driven. The other one, PepsiCo, was really marketing and brand-driven. And so I created this capability and this approach from scratch. Here I came with a company that's been leveraging design over the years in an incredible way, especially the design of products and design of user interfaces and user experiences. The past chairman announced two different design revolutions in the '90s and early 2000s to really drive the evolution of the business and drive transformation in the business, and it's been very successful in doing that. Design was a key part of the transformation of Samsung from an OEM first and then a producer of entry-level domestic appliances and products in consumer electronics to become one of the most iconic leaders in the world. Design was a key driver of this. The challenge that we have today is that the world keeps changing and evolving at the speed of light.

The way we interact with people is more global than ever. Competition is more aggressive than ever. There is the world of startups and new products and new brands that keep arriving. China is playing a completely different role than 10 years ago, 20 years ago, in the past. So, the landscape is changing dramatically. On top of it, artificial intelligence, robotics is about to change everything over again. And so, design needs to evolve with the world that is evolving around us. And this human-centered approach that I've been advocating for and pitching all my life is something that management of Samsung thought could have brought value inside the organization, elevating design from very incredible products, incredible experiences with our digital and physical technologies to something that is even more meaningful in the life of people, more holistic, from, you know, starting from the meaning of the brand, the story that we tell you through these products and interaction and experience you have with these products to make technology as meaningful as possible in your life today.

In a world that is polarized, on one side there is a lot of excitement for what technology can do in our lives or what AI can do in our lives and robots and new technologies that will come in the coming years. On the other side there are concerns. There are concerns that AI may take my job, that AI may erode my human qualities, that AI may eventually become even a threat to humanity in the most negative interpretations of what AI can do. And so the role of design is the one of taming this technology at the service of humanity. The one of putting people first all the time in everything we do in the company. When we design new products and new experiences and we think about our portfolio evolving, the idea is that we always put people first and we use technology to really create value in their lives.

And we created these four different categories that we want to focus on. The idea that we want to help people living longer, better, loud, and on. Living longer means that we want to use technology to help people with their mental and physical wellness and health. And also we want to use technology for the safety of our body, of our loved ones, of our pets, the safety of our belongings, the safety of our home. So, this is all about living longer. Living better is technology to do things on your behalf, like robotics and AI, or eventually to do things with you, but in a much more productive way, so that you can carve out time to do what matters the most to you, to live better. And to do what matters the most to you may mean going and walking in a park with your kids, or reading a book, or going to the gym, or just relaxing, meditating, sleeping, whatever you want. Essentially, it's technology to free you up from technology and enable you to do, again, what is important to you.

Live loud is all about creativity, expression, imagination. It goes from the creation of content for your social media to the creation of art or music, all the way to the creation of a business, a startup, from the comfort of your living room using technologies. And then finally, live on is all about preserving memories. We do it already today by preserving pictures and videos of ourselves and our loved ones. But more and more, because of AI, we'll be able to create digital twins of ourselves and the people we care about. And these digital twins will be able to connect us with these people, no matter where they are, if they are eventually on the other side of the world, or they're not available to us in a specific moment, or eventually, even when they're not going to be with us anymore on this planet, we're going to be able to recreate the thoughts, the emotions, the memories of these people in a variety of different ways.

The way I explained this to my fellow designers in the company is: imagine when my parents are in their 80s, and I hope they're going to live a long life, you know, 50 more years. But when they're not with me anymore, I would love to still have the possibility to ask my father, 'What would you do in this difficult moment if you were me?' Or ask my mom, 'What was the recipe of the carrot cake that you used to do when I was a kid?' And so, that's what the Bon is about. But you see, four categories to create value with a big focus on people, humanity, is what we're trying to do with design.

Well, before anything else, it's an incredible privilege and excitement. You know, when both myself and my teams face moments of difficulties, challenges, we feel the pressure, I remind myself, I remind the team that we are lucky. We are incredibly privileged to work on one of those few mega corporations that are going to define the future of society through technology. And for me this is a dream job, and again in the difficult moments we need to remind ourselves that to be here is really a privilege. So again, before anything else, it's about having that kind of opportunity. Now with that comes the responsibility. The responsibility not just in front of the company but the responsibility in front of humanity. Technology can be used in a good way or can be used in a negative way. Not just from the collective communities but from every individual.

And you can give a mobile phone to people and they can use it as a tool for productivity, a tool to be connected with the people they love. You can use, you know, in my case I use the mobile phone to be very close to my family that is in Italy and the United States through, you know, all kinds of apps from writing each other to video calls. I use the phone to share my ideas and my philosophy through social media. I use the phone to compose music. I use the phone in so many different ways. But you can also have people that are slaves to their phones. They spend the entire days on their phones. They use the phone as a gate to reality and they disconnect from friends, from family members.

And so our role is to make sure that we remind the world, we remind our users, we remind society all the time that technology, a phone, is just a tool. But what really is important is the values that define our lives, the habits that we have. That's why I always talk about love and care and kindness and curiosity, a series of values that define both the innovators, so the designers, the business leaders, the entrepreneurs, the way they design their products, technologies, experiences to put them at the service of humanity. But it's also about the users, the society, the conversations we should have with the media, with all kinds of platforms used to communicate, reminding everybody that the conversation shouldn't be about technology yes or not, robots yes or not, AI yes or not, but it's all about how you use all of this.

AI is an incredible way to help us in our lives. It can really make our life better, but it needs to be used in a responsible way, in a good way, from everybody, from companies, from brands, from governments, but mostly it all starts with us, users, people, the way we use those technologies and those products. A journalist asked me recently, 'Well, you want to create more technology. We already have these phones. We wake up and, you know, many people instead of kissing their wives, they're there attached to the phone from the very beginning.' My answer was, 'Is the problem the technology? Is the problem the phone? Or is the problem the person that does that?' Because I don't do that. You know, I find the right balance to make sure that I have time for my kids, I have time for my wife, I have time for the people I care about. But obviously, this needs to come from within.

You need to look at these technologies and any product, even the non-technological ones, as tools, as platforms, as means, as ways to do something. But what you do with it is driven by your intellect, by your heart, by your soul, by your values, by what you think is important in your life and in the life of the people you care about.