President Park of South Korea praises SAP in advancing the creative economy in Korea

In 2014, SAP Chairman Hasso Plattner met with President Park Keun-hye of Republic of Korea and promised to establish the SAP AppHaus in Seoul. Two years have passed, and on 22 March 2016, the SAP Design & Co-Innovation Center (DCC) APJ team had the privilege of hosting President Park Geun-hye of the Republic of Korea at the new SAP AppHaus which is currently in the process of creating.

The visit was part of the Opening Ceremony of the Startup Campus building complex where the AppHaus is located, organized by the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning, a ministry of the government of South Korea. The campus building sits at the hub of ICT valley, Pangyo. It is designed to nurture more than 200 startups, offering workspace and consulting services for capital funding and other branches. As being one of the tenants of the leading global companies, the SAP AppHaus will play a significant role to bring the impact of Design Thinking to the local startup ecosystem. In the opening speech of the campus, President Park called out SAP as a company making a valuable contribution to the creative economy and helping local startups go global by leveraging the power of SAP HANA and SAP’s Start up Focus program.

During the President’s visit, the Design & Co-Innovation Center (DCC) team, which is based at the AppHaus, introduced SAP’s approach to innovation culture, namely people, process and space. “The SAP AppHaus in Korea will be a network of other AppHaus spaces in Heidelberg and Palo Alto”, explained Christopher Han, VP of Design & Co-Innovation Center APJ. President Park specifically thanked Chairman Hasso Plattner for keeping his promise to build the SAP AppHaus advancing the creative economy in Korea.

During the introduction, the DCC team made a circle with the President in the main hall area and played a warm-up, just like any other Design Thinking workshop (Design Thinking workshop always need good reenergizing warm ups, so does any meetings!). Surprisingly, President Park was one of the most active participants. She agreed that we need to collaborate even when we do small exercises like these.

After the exercise, the DCC presented two successful projects: The “new IoT solution for Mil Cow Bin monitoring system using HCP/Fiori” and the “Design Thinking Tour with SAP (a.k.a the DT tour)”. Two participants of the project gave their testimony about the co-innovation experience and its impact. Marie Kim shared her story from being a student participant in the DT tour to an innovation consultant at SAP.

The finale of the visit was marked by a live performance of our members on the topic of “Way of Working” which successfully showed the Design Thinking approach to work versus the habits of typical waterfall-driven organization. This playful insight into people-centered innovation culture was well received. After the performance, President Park remarked, “you’ve communicated through the performance exactly what I wanted to say about working culture.”

After the successful conclusion of President Park’s visit, The Blue House (President’s Office) and the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning have all given SAP high regards for a successful event. Every member felt excited that President Park clearly understood the message that the SAP Design & Co-Innovation Center team is capable of creating innovation with customers, no matter if they are companies, government, startups, or students. Moreover, the media coverage about SAP and the newly established AppHaus in Seoul was overwhelming: there were over 100+ press articles published within just one day.

The DCC APJ team worked hard to make the visit a successful event: designing the program and space, writing scripts, acting, and communicating with the government officials. Everyone in the team, including our friends and family members, was involved in the many cycles of iterations and feedback rounds. “From defining the concept to implementing the designed program, we have embodied the principle of design thinking,” recalls Esther Lee, Senior UX Designer at Design & Co-Innovation Center, who led the program of the visit.

Needless to say, it’s been an exciting and busy month preparing for the event, but this is just the beginning. The SAP AppHaus in Korea is underway and we expect the space to be open to customers towards the end of May. Stay tuned for updates on our Facebook, blog, and twitter pages as well as on the UX Community.