ABSTRACT
Past work on latecomer catch-up has addressed the critical role played by institutions and organizational capabilities in stimulating innovations and firm performance. However, few works have examined how technological regimes impact on latecomer catch-up strategies as industry structures evolve, and vice versa. More importantly, there is little work that has studied how firms have strategized to catch up and leapfrog incumbents. This book began with the objective of analysing the changing technological regimes in the IC industry and how latecomer technology transition through resource acquisition strategies and co-evolutionary lock-ins have been deployed to catch up in the IC industry with evolving structures and value systems. Case studies of pure-play IC foundries were used to analyse firm strategies to build technological capabilities in their quest to catch up and leapfrog competitors in the industry. The findings provide important implications for theory, firm management and government policy.
