SEIZING THE OPPORTUNITY OF PARADIGM SHIFTS: CATCH-UP OF CHINESE ICT FIRMS

Abstract

The emergence of latecomer firms from East Asia in high-technology sectors is one of the most striking phenomena of world economy in the past decades. However, while most literature focuses on the catch-up of Korea and Taiwan, we know relatively little about the practices in China, especially the firm-level experiences. Based on in-depth case analyses of three Chinese ICT firms from exploratory and evolutionary perspectives, we attempt to locate the window of opportunity for Chinese ICT firms to catch up with forerunners and identify strategies they employed to seize the window of opportunity. Our research findings suggest that paradigm shifts provided these latecomers with an opportunity to penetrate the market and universal standards or new technologies from other domains serve as the window of opportunity for latecomers to surpass forerunners. This study also reveals that technology-market combination as well as other strategies including niche market proposition, service innovation, collaborative R&D and leveraging complementary technologies can be utilized as effective approaches to realize catch-up.