How Samsung can recover from the note7 debacles

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How Samsung Can Recover From the Note 7 Debacle

A visitor tests the stylus pen on the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone during a Samsung Electronics 'Unpacked' launch event in London, U.K., on Aug. 2, 2016.
Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Killing its Note 7 stopped the bleeding, but how does the smartphone maker start healing?
Earlier this month, Samsung made the right call in abandoning its occasionally combustible Galaxy Note 7 smartphone. It was actually the only sensible call, given that Samsung initially identified the reason for the malfunction incorrectly, and then subsequently still couldn’t put its finger on the actual cause.

Dropping the Note 7 triggered a massive two-day round of media coverage worldwide. But to Samsung’s benefit, it also took the immediate tension out of the overall story, effectively ending the intense media scrutiny that had been consistently mounting since the first phone smoldered back in late August.

But the quiet ended earlier this week when the Wall Street Journal delivered a definitive report of how Samsung had decided to pull the plug on the Note 7, confirming that the company had still not yet identified the specific source of the malfunctions.

That story echoed throughout the tech and business media worldwide. It also closed the chapter on the death of the Note 7, and opened a new chapter speculating about how the company will recover. The bleeding had stopped, but how quickly would the company heal itself and its brand?

Throughout the Note 7 saga, plenty of pundits over-reacted and dramatically predicted a gloomy future for Samsung. But as Rice University business professor Uptal Dholkakia explained in the Harvard Business Review, Samsung is actually in a good position to recover strongly over the long haul.

But to get on that path, Samsung must take three key actions in the short term.

Anticipate ongoing incidents.

Some of those incidents may be real, especially since some Note 7 owners are reportedly not trading in their potentially defective devices. Other future incidents may be imagined, as the extensive media coverage has undoubtedly made some Samsung phone owners highly sensitive to even the slightest warming in their pockets. There will also likely be some faked incidents, as fraudsters seek to exploit Samsung’s weak position.

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