| dc.description.abstract | It is product innovation or process innovation that most high-tech companies devote to differentiate in a fierce competition environment and finally intend to dominate their markets. However, some cases such as Apple or Maxtor had demonstrated that neither technology innovators nor technology pioneers absolutely lead to be the winners in industries. Beyond technology innovation, academias in management area gradually focus their concerns on business model innovation for competitive advantages. Furthermore, since the Internet era in 90s, more and more practitioners, including Yahoo!, Amazon, eBay, Dell, Starbucks, McDonald’s, and TSMC, etc., successfully become the leading or well-known companies all over the world according to their business model innovation. Unfortunately, it is still ambiguous for both academics and practitioners in “business model” and “business model innovation.” The goal of this research is then to explore what the main elements driving the business model innovation are and what the relationships between business model innovation and technology innovation are.
By exploring a typical case of TSMC, not only the leading company of the foundry business in the semiconductor industry but also the representative of business model innovator, this study attempts to (1) exemplify the business model innovation based on Mitchell’s “7W-Who, What, When, Where, How, How much, and Why” (2003), Magretta (2002), and Chesbrough & Rosenbloom (2003), (2) replenish the theoretical foundation for business model innovation via our analysis, (3) find the driving elements of 7W for business model innovation, and (4) disclose the potential patterns of the business model innovation.
Grounded theory approach is imported for data collection and analysis. Through analysis of TSMC’s business model innovations, this study found that (1) fierce competition and continual technology advancements in the semiconductor industry lead to TSMC’s innovations on business model frequently, (2) there are three phases of TSMC’s business model innovation, “pure foundry phase,” “manufacturing service and value added phase,” and “inter-firm collaboration phase,” which is driven by “where,” “how,” and “who,” respectively, and (3) “business model innovation” and “technology innovation” drive each other in three phases and the relation of their innovative frequencies is positive. The results would give researchers the industrial insights and contribute the practitioners with the strategic foresights that it is business model innovation for a company’s competitive advantages under the physical limitations of technology innovation. We also hopes that the findings of driving elements and patterns of business model innovation in this research could give hints on next generation of business model innovation for Taiwan’s foundry industry. | en_US |