Samsung Electronics promoted David Eun, executive vice president and head of the Global Innovation Center, the company’s start-up accelerator based in Silicon Valley, to president, in a move that was effective Jan. 1. 

“It’s a signal from Samsung that the company is committed to software services,” he said of his recent promotion last week.

Eun, 47, has become the youngest president at Samsung. He joined the company four year ago. Prior to that, he worked at AOL and Google.

Over the past few years, he has led Samsung’s diverse collaboration projects with software start-ups in Silicon Valley, including several acquisitions, such as LoopPay, the mobile payment start-up, and SmartThings, the smart home platform developer.

“We are like a start-up in Samsung. We don’t take a big company approach. We move quickly and always stay hungry,” he said.

“We mix the best practices learned in Silicon Valley and Samsung. That seems obvious, but many companies don’t execute on this.”

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)