Samsung’s 400+ layer V-NAND reveals a Talent Development lesson: innovation grows when employees cross internal boundaries.

THE CHALLENGE — When Expertise Alone Is Not Enough

“That’s not my area.”
In a large organization, this phrase can quietly define how work gets done.

R&D focuses on R&D. Manufacturing focuses on manufacturing. Quality focuses on quality.
Specialization is essential. But what happens when a problem can no longer be solved within one specialty?

Samsung Electronics offers an interesting example.

Peemo — who researches public evidence of how employees actually work:
“Dash, Samsung’s development of V10 BV-NAND brought hundreds of engineers together virtually every day to discuss challenges and solve problems.”

V10 is Samsung’s next-generation V-NAND with more than 400 layers.

As the technology became more complex, engineers needed to understand not only their own process areas but also adjacent ones.

They talked with engineers from other specialties. Cross-functional task forces were formed. Manufacturing supported development lots, while technical teams contributed expertise and data analysis.

The technical challenge had become a human challenge:
How do specialists solve a problem that does not respect organizational boundaries?

CROSSING BOUNDARIES — A Different Form of Talent Development

Dash — who analyzes the evidence through leadership, dialogue and questioning:
“This is where the case becomes particularly interesting for HR.”

When we hear “cross-boundary learning,” we often imagine sending employees outside the company—to another company, another industry or an external project.

But Samsung’s engineers did not need to leave Samsung.

An R&D engineer entering the world of manufacturing crosses a boundary.
A process engineer learning about an adjacent process crosses a boundary.
A technical specialist listening to quality or product-planning perspectives crosses a boundary.

Even inside one corporation, different functions can speak different professional languages, look at different evidence and prioritize different outcomes.

This changes the Talent Development question.

Instead of asking only:
“Where can we send this employee?”

HR might also ask:
“Which world inside our company has this employee never experienced?”

15,000 EMPLOYEES — Turning Internal Diversity into Insight

Another Samsung case shows the same behavior from a different angle.

Peemo:
“When Samsung was developing gaming features for its QLED TVs, the product-planning team used MOSAIC, its collective-intelligence platform, to gather suggestions from around 15,000 Samsung employees.”

The engineers did not simply assume what gamers wanted.

They tested different gaming devices one by one.

They observed.
They tested.
They learned.
They adjusted.

Samsung effectively turned its own employees into a large pool of different perspectives.

This suggests something important for Talent Development:

Employees can learn by crossing not only organizational boundaries, but also boundaries of experience, expertise and assumptions.

THREE LENSES — What Can HR Learn from These Behaviors?

Dash:
“Samsung’s employee behavior becomes even more interesting when we look at it through three Talent Development lenses.”

The Extraordinary Leader™ — Leadership Without Waiting for a Title
The Extraordinary Leader™ does not limit leadership to people with managerial titles.
Leadership can emerge when individuals take responsibility for results and contribute to team goals.

Samsung’s engineers did not simply remain inside their assigned professional territory.
When solving the problem required another specialty, they connected with the people they needed.

For HR, leadership development can therefore begin with a simple behavioral question:
“When you encounter a problem beyond your expertise, what do you do next?”

DialogueWORKS — Different Functions See Different Realities
Different functions can look at the same situation and reach different conclusions.
Experience, knowledge, values, assumptions and previous successes influence how people interpret Evidence.

An engineer sees one thing.
Manufacturing may see another.
Quality may notice something else.
Product planning may interpret the same situation from the customer’s perspective.

Cross-functional dialogue can therefore expose our Mental Models.

Three questions become useful:
“What Evidence did I actually observe?”
“What meaning did I add to it?”
“Could there be another interpretation?”

Crossing an internal boundary means encountering not only different people, but also different ways of seeing reality.

PQA — Are We Solving the Right Problem?
Suppose an engineer asks:
“How can I improve my process?”

It sounds like a good question.

But what if the real problem is created by the interaction between several processes?

Then a more powerful question becomes:
“Is this really a problem within my process?”

PQA encourages us to reconsider the problem itself before rushing toward a better answer.

That shift can change who becomes involved, what Evidence is examined and where the solution is found.

FROM TALENT DEVELOPMENT TO MARKET DEVELOPMENT

Here is where the Samsung cases become especially relevant to international companies operating in Japan.

Large organizations already contain enormous diversity:

R&D.
Manufacturing.
Quality.
Sales.
Marketing.
Customer service.
Different countries.
Different generations.
Different professional backgrounds.

Yet organizational boundaries can prevent employees from accessing that diversity.

The QLED example is revealing.

Instead of relying only on the product-planning team, Samsung tapped approximately 15,000 employees for ideas and then tested products against actual user experience.

This behavior is relevant not only to Talent Development.

It can also contribute to Market Development.

A new market opportunity may emerge when employees connect expertise that previously remained separated.

A technical insight meets a customer insight.
A manufacturing perspective meets a product idea.
A local-market observation meets global expertise.
The boundary itself can become a place of discovery.

THE HR QUESTION — What Boundaries Have Your Employees Never Crossed?

Samsung’s 400+ layer V-NAND is an impressive semiconductor achievement.

But for HLS Global Case Research, another question is equally interesting:
How did employees work while developing it?

The pattern looks like this:
See the problem.

Do not try to solve everything within your own specialty.


Connect with the people you need.
Listen to different perspectives.
Test.
Look at the Evidence.
Revise your judgment。
Act again.

This is more than cross-functional collaboration.

It is a way of developing people through real work.

For HR leaders in large and mid-sized companies, especially those working across cultures and functions in Japan, the next Talent Development opportunity may already exist inside the organization.

Before asking:
“Where should we send our employees to broaden their experience?”

perhaps we should first ask:
“What boundaries inside our own company have they never crossed?”

Because beyond that boundary, employees may discover not only a new way of working—
but also a new market opportunity.

Akira Chida (Dash)
SmartWorks
HLS Global Case Research