ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the resources embedded in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China influenced strategies of technology development in the global TFT-LCD and LED industries through the creation of country-specific innovation capabilities. In the global TFT-LCD industry, Japan was a benchmark leader between 1989 and 1998. The chapter argues that the East Asian latecomer firms succeeded in the 1990s because they embraced an aggressive production strategy that was designed to build technological innovation capabilities. This strategy captures the essential parts of the global market share from the industrial leaders by using either large-scale original equipment manufacturing (OEM) contracting or vertical integration and branding. The chapter reveals that South Korea's and Taiwan's innovation capabilities were mostly built by creating complementary knowledge in technologies that were extraneous to the core business strategy of the technology leader, Japan. This enabled Japan's technology-push innovation and South Korea's and Taiwan's demand-pull innovation to evolve sequentially and interactively.
