Class Saatchi is as simple as technology can get, but its impact can be way beyond its size. This clicker device from Tag hive connects to the smartphone of the teacher and uses an app to give digital assessments of the entire class, thus offering a dashboard for the school administration.
The archive was spawned out of C-Labs, Samsung’s in-house incubation program, which selected employee Pankaj Agarwal’s idea and took it to the next level.
Agarwal is not alone, though. Since it started in 2012, this unique startup acceleration program, has seen 1,507 Samsung employees participate in 365 C-Lab projects. About 128 of these projects have been transferred to in-house Samsung divisions, while 59 have spun off into standalone companies. The Korean tech giant has in six years invested $26 million in the 59 C-Lab Inside spin-off startups — 30 of these have raised a total of over $100 million in follow-up investments.
Mark Son, Creativity, and Innovation Center, Samsung Electronics, explains that the idea of C-Lab (Creativity Lab) emerged with the realization that constant innovation was the only thing that could help Samsung maintain its edge over its competition. “How can Samsung maintain its strength while spreading creative culture? C-Lab has started with this question in mind,” Son remembers, adding that over a decade ago Samsung executives went to Silicon Valley to learn about the startup culture there and came up with the idea of creating a work environment that maximized employee potential.
The C-Labs project has two aspects — C- Lab Inside for Samsung employees and C-Lab Outside for entrepreneurs and startups outside the company. The former was how C-Labs originally started in 2012, to discover new ideas and cultivate a creative corporate culture within the company. In 2018, the latter was kick-started to stimulate the start-up ecosystem in South Korea with financial aid, mentoring, consultation, business cooperation, and infrastructure.
The main purpose of the C-Labs program, according to Son, was to “expand the creative culture within the company by discovering and implementing innovative ideas”. He adds: “Through C Lab, we have attempted to make the entire Samsung creative and innovative with the intention for synergy between the traditional organization and accelerator.”
Twice a year, C-Lab Inside selects ideas submitted by Samsung employees. After several screening processes, about 30-40 ideas that drive industry-wide innovation are shortlisted regardless of the business sector. The C-Lab Outside ideas, meanwhile, are selected via an annual open competition and closed by a management-level review from Samsung. About 20 startups are eligible every year and end up getting about 100 million Won in funding (about $1.1 million).
Son explains that the basic criterion for evaluation is clarity about the problem-solution fit, or PSF. “The ideas need to resonate with the audience in terms of PSF and should undergo prototyping and marketability verification process several times a year,” he explains. Projects that are closely related to Samsung’s business are transferred to an in-house division for further development, he adds.
Over the years, the C-Labs inside program has spawned innovative Samsung products like its eco-packaging, The Lifestyle TV, and even Samsung Pay. Among the Spinoffs, the Link flow wearable 360-degree cameras with varied uses in security and remote medicate care is a noteworthy success. Salted, one of the first companies to be established as a spin-off, has meanwhile become one of the top-ranked in the Amazon golf training product category and recently expanded its business into digital health care.
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