chairman, his wife, and his inner circle in the chairman’s living room.
They encountered a penetrating and reverent silence. Cigarette smoke
drifted through the room. The chairman sat calmly, his gaze studious. A
video camera recorded the meeting, which would be broadcast across the
Samsung empire the next morning.
“I want you to do three things,” the chairman explained. “First, make
my designers creative. Second, make them globally aware. Finally, I expect
a three percent return.”
Bruce wasn’t sure about the last request, but he suspected Chairman Lee
was setting his expectations low.
“We realized that the chairman was seeking a gaiatsu,” Bruce told me.
“It’s an outside force, the Japanese say, that brings about sweeping change.”
—
BRUCE AND MIHO NEXT toured Samsung’s Corporate Design Center,
documenting what they saw and writing a report on Samsung’s best and
worst practices. They met with resistance almost immediately.
“The place was just shark-infested,” Bruce said.
“What do you know about Korea?” a Samsung executive asked Bruce
and Miho. Samsung’s team leaders were especially hostile to Miho because
of his Japanese heritage.
“I’ve been all the way up to the Yalu River,” Miho retorted, reminding
the Korean businessmen that he was a tank commander in the American
army who had been shot and injured in the Korean War. He’d lost his
brother to wounds sustained on the battlefield, defending South Korea from
a communist invasion.
The Samsung executives fell quiet on this point. A Japanese fighting for
Korea? The pair could sense their hosts easing up a little on them. But they
knew there was still a hard road ahead.
“I was appalled about the way they viewed Miho,” Bruce said later.
On February 15, 1995, Bruce submitted his critique and
recommendations to Chairman Lee. But there was immediate pushback.
“The initial suggestions for department chairs in the report were
rejected,” he told me.
The chairman had told them that people don’t change easily. And he