Design guru calls for innovative thinking

By Kim Yoo-chul

Kim Young-se, the first Korean to set up a design house in Silicon Valley in 1986, is a seasoned industrial designer who has produced a number of innovative products.

Kim, the founder of Inno Design, has designed products for Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics.

Back in 2005, then Microsoft CEO Bill Gates directly mentioned Kim’s Iriver-branded MP3 player during his speech at a major CES tech fair and praised the device as a leading design product in the digital era.

Kim emphasized the importance of “innovative thinking” to design new products and have success in business and life. He put forward a new concept of “purple people,” who are creative and innovative.

“If you want success, then you should have entrepreneurship. You should drop what was respected three decades ago. Try to become ‘purple people,’” Kim said in a press conference on the sidelines of this year’s industry forum organized by the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) in Pyeongchang, Gangwon Province, Thursday.

“You can’t easily define workers in the Silicon Valley as white-collar or blue-collar as they engage both in office and factory work. But it’s interesting to see that the ‘purple collar’ people are creating new leadership,” he said.

In Silicon Valley, “purple-collar” labor is clustered, dispersed and segregated and their patterned locations in social organizational structures also serve a particular value-producing function.

“If you have more purple-collar labor, then this will change the workplace as these employees help foster productivity, ease workplace tensions and boost employee morale. The government and firms need to think about the implication of widespread purple-collar labor in the Valley,” Kim said.

According to his observation, “creative thinking” comes if companies are ready to offer “real value” to consumers.

“Today, human-oriented value is getting more important than technology-initiated value. The nature of an entrepreneur is to solve issues and offer value to someone; therefore, companies should improve their communication skills for better understanding about humans and consumers,” Kim said.

“Intrapreneurship” is another concept he put forward to promote entrepreneurship among employees of a company.

The designer believes the government should be aggressive in launching programs for ventures, startups and young entrepreneurs, who’ve failed to commercialize their products, to offer a “second chance.”

Kim said he is eyeing ventures and startups with technology in IoT and wearable devices that need support for commercialization.

“Design is the technology that sells technology,” Kim said.

Kim earned a bachelor’s degree from Seoul National University and received a master’s degree in industrial design from the University of Illinois in the United States.