The Asia Pacific region’s first SAP AppHaus location celebrates 5 years of design thinking innovation and creativity together with customers and partners with social-distancing mind. According to an interview with Christopher Han, Head of SAP AppHaus Korea, the organization held five mini celebrations instead of one big event to commemorate pivotal experiences and accomplishments with a select group of customers.
Adaire Fox-Martin, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Customer Success, congratulates SAP AppHaus Korea:
“The SAP AppHaus Seoul team provides me with such fond memories. It all began when I was president of SAP Asia Pacific Japan. I remember how the members facilitated my leadership team offsite in 2015. Together, we designed and launched the strategic – and very successful – “Asia Rising 2020” initiative. Congratulations to the team! I wish you the very best and continued success in helping customers in APJ run best with SAP.”
Promoting Design Thinking for Innovation
The SAP AppHaus Network is a community of creative space owners, run by SAP’s Design & Co-Innovation Center (DCC) consisting of SAP teams and partners.
In 2014, during a visit by SAP Chairman and co-founder Hasso Plattner in South Korea, he pledged to then-President Geun-hye Park that he will open an SAP AppHaus center in the country. In 2015, that promise came into fruition and SAP AppHaus Korea was established to provide a customer-facing co-innovation space where South Korean information and communications (ICT) startups can cultivate design thinking innovation and transform business data into customer value based on the SAP Business Technology Platform.
SAP AppHaus Korea is located at Startup Campus, the hub of ICT valley, Pangyo in the south of Seoul. The co-innovation space practices an “experimental and prototyping culture” intended to adapt to users’ needs. According to SAP, this flexible and people-centric environment allows customers to create rapid prototypes and ignite their creativity freely.
Han had previously commented,
“We can do more than use our solutions to support companies in their digital transformation. We can show companies how they can change their work culture and ways of working, so that they can continue to be successful in the future.”
Since its opening, SAP AppHaus Korea has conducted over 120 projects, welcomed 12,228 visitors, offered 213 tours, and hosted 417 workshops, according to Han.
This year, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, SAP AppHaus Korea, together with its sister locations worldwide, turned workshops and customer engagements to virtual experiences in order to ensure business continuity for customers.
Han notes,
“The work of helping customers innovate with SAP Business Technology Platform continues whether online or offline. We can support the different phases in an innovation project as efficiently as before. Clearly, the pandemic could not stop us from collaborating with teams across SAP to continue our future-oriented work with customers!”
Nurturing Co-innovation in the Asia Pacific Region
SAP AppHaus Korea’s co-innovation partners include:
- Doosan Corporation, a Fortune Global 500 company that primarily focuses on consumer goods, manufacturing, and the trading and construction sectors.
- Clair, a fast-growing startup that manufactures and sells air purifiers. The company is globally recognized for its filter patents that produce higher filtration efficiency.
SAP AppHaus Network continues to grow globally and in Asia. Han said that they are currently onboarding their first member of the SAP AppHaus Network in China.
