If Mauro Porcini’s mother had had her way, Samsung Electronics’ head designer wouldn’t have gone into design at all. “She wanted me to be a priest,” the Italian-born Porcini says, as he sits in his new office at Samsung’s R&D center, just outside Seoul’s buzzy Gangnam district, on a frigid December morning.
Porcini did not take his mother’s advice and join the priesthood. But he does see his current job in corporate design as something like a higher calling.
