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The influence of knowledge source and ambidexterity in the thin film transistor and liquid crystal display industry: evidence from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan

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Abstract

Based on country-level comparisons, this study applies geographic (internal vs. external) and knowledge (exploitation vs. exploration) boundaries to explore the influence of knowledge sources and ambidexterity on production and innovation performance in the thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) industries of the three major players, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, from 1995 to 2009. Our findings suggest that different resource-based industrial development strategies are associated with the specific knowledge acquisition strategies in the technology leader, Japan and its followers, Korea and Taiwan. The contribution of this study is empirical verification of the influence of knowledge sources and ambidextrous capabilities on production and innovation activities in the TFT-LCD industries of these countries. Since each country is endowed with different resources, this study aims to reveal the strong implications of this for the design of an industrial strategy that has to acquire both known and new knowledge through internal and external sources simultaneously, while carefully integrating them and exploiting their interactions.

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Notes

  1. The global TFT-LCD industry was moving from an introductory to a growth stage in the early 2000s, where industrial structure shifted towards horizontal integration and mass production capability became a focus. As Romer (1990) argues, technical innovation is explicitly formulated as product innovation whereby new markets are introduced through new products in the industrial introductory stage; the other type being process innovation in which new and improved production methods (usually through specialization and mechanization) are introduced to increase productivity in the industrial growth stage.

  2. The US and the latecomers China and Singapore are not considered here, either because they do not contribute to global TFT-LCD production, or because they have not yet demonstrated their significance (having <5 % of the TFT-LCD global market share up to 2009) (IDC 2009).

  3. It is not until the beginning of 2009, LG Philips became LG Display after Philips withdrew its investment stake’.

  4. For the detailed growth dynamics of TFT-LCD industry in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, see Hu (2008) and Mathews (2005).

  5. At the end of 2009, Innolux subsequently merged with TPO and CMO, retaining the CMO name.

  6. The IPC is an international standard to classify technologies in patent applications; it divides technologies into eight sections with approximately 70,000 subdivisions. Please see the WIPO for the details, www.wipo.int/classifications/ipc/en/general/preface.html.

  7. There are several reasons why it may be claimed that the use of USPTO data is the most reliable means of exploring innovation capability in this case. Firstly, these data include statistics determined by the USPTO during registration that are becoming a global standard. Secondly, US patents have been found to be an adequate indicator of the economic importance of patenting in general (Hall and Ziedonis 2002). Finally, the USPTO data have a unique feature in that they capture the links between an invention and the prior knowledge with which it is most closely associated (Grupp and Schmooh 1999).

  8. We have operated the Pearson correlations for each independent variable in the three countries as seen in Appendix 2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, 300, Taiwan

    Mei-Chih Hu & Yun-Chu Lu

  2. Department of Finance and International Business, Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei, 24205, Taiwan

    Ching-Yan Wu

  3. Graduate School of Information, Yonsei University, 134 Shinchon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, Korea

    Jung Hoon Lee

Authors
  1. Mei-Chih Hu
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  2. Ching-Yan Wu
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  3. Jung Hoon Lee
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  4. Yun-Chu Lu
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Correspondence to Mei-Chih Hu.

Appendix

Appendix

Appendix 1

See Table 7.

Table 7 The 13 core technology classes in TFT-LCDs, by International Classification (IPC)
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Appendix 2

See Table 8.

Table 8 Pearson correlations
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Hu, MC., Wu, CY., Lee, J.H. et al. The influence of knowledge source and ambidexterity in the thin film transistor and liquid crystal display industry: evidence from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Scientometrics 99, 233–260 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1226-y

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