Samsung's design chief says brand must build a community, not just better products

Mauro Porcini, chief design officer of Samsung Electronics' DX (device experience) division, has drawn attention with his analysis of what drives K-culture's global success. After roughly a year of living in South Korea, Porcini said fandom, originality and self-expression have been the forces behind the worldwide spread of Korean culture.

The keyword Porcini emphasized above all is "community" — the idea that consumers should feel they are building products together with a brand, not simply buying them. The question now is whether the DX division, navigating significant business uncertainty, can use design-led management to forge what he calls a "Samsung community."

According to industry sources Wednesday, Porcini recently published a LinkedIn post analyzing the influence of K-culture. He said his time living in Korea had revealed three recurring patterns behind its success.

Porcini joined Samsung last April, recruited from PepsiCo, and is widely regarded as a world-class design authority. Born in Italy, he earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees in industrial design from Politecnico di Milano. He began his career as a product designer at Philips before serving as CDO at 3M and then PepsiCo.

The first pattern Porcini identified is fandom. "K-pop, Korean drama series and the popular cosmetics industry have transformed audiences into passionate communities," he said. "They create content, organize events and actively grow the brands they love." He added that it is rare to find another country anywhere in the world where public participation is this vibrant.

He also said that ideas already in wide circulation take on a distinctly original character once they pass through Korea. "From fashion and music to food, beauty and technology, Korea constantly absorbs global trends and reinterprets them through a Korean lens," Porcini said. "Innovation is born not only from invention out of nothing, but also from remixing and recombination."

The third pattern is self-expression woven into everyday Korean life. "Everything — fashion, tech devices, accessories, cafes, digital content — becomes a means of expressing one's own identity," he said. "Products are not merely consumed; they become part of the stories people live every day."

Whether Samsung Electronics' DX division can actually build the kind of community Porcini describes remains to be seen. He was direct on the point: "To gain a competitive edge, we need to go beyond simply making better products and build a community of people who want to create those products together with the brand."

The stakes are particularly high given the pressure on the DX division to reverse a slide in earnings. The division is grappling with what analysts have called "chipflation" — cost pressure from rising semiconductor prices — and operating profit is expected to fall year-on-year across the mobile experience business as well as home appliances and televisions.

Porcini's focus on Korean people and culture connects directly to the design philosophy he has long championed. At the Samsung Tech Forum held during CES 2026 in Las Vegas in January, he made the case for human-centered design. "A people-first approach is not just the right thing to do for the future — it is strategically and economically essential," he said. "Technology must be designed with people at the center, and technology designed that way will deliver more meaningful innovation to everyday life."