ABSTRACT
Open supply chains in the digital generation have transformed the global business environment into a borderless world. Ÿe embedded mechanisms in all products using semiconductors and ¨ rmware impacted ¨ rms to adapt their product architecture from integral to modular type. Such architectural change is in a sense the primary change agent for the economic system from closed specialization to open collaborative internationalization. Ÿe PC was the ¨rst technology module that adopted the micro processor unit (MPU). In the beginning, the speed of the processor was very slow. Increasingly, the small-scale innovative venture business groups started developing much faster MPUs and made them available in the open business environment (Ogawa et al., 2009). Besides, a series of the open innovation policy of the U.S. government in the 1980s changed the PC industry from closed specialization to interorganizational open collaboration. From the middle 1990s, the PC industry adopted the modular type as its standard product architecture. Ÿus, the global PC industry transformed itself toward open collaborative internationalization. Ÿe PC, which ¨rst adopted MPU as technology module in the world, also introduced open international collaboration into the world. Ÿis facilitated the widespread realization of global supply chains.
