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

摘要

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