Thomas P. Murtha

Flying Geese as Moving Targets: Are Korea and Taiwan Catching up with Japan in Advanced Displays?

Are flying geese moving targets or sitting ducks? This paper examines strategies that Korean and Taiwanese firms and governments adopted to build globally competitive advanced display manufacturing capabilities in the face of Japans manufacturing advantages. We examine case evidence from two perspectives: Asia skepticism and network globalization. We observe that the lead goose appears vulnerable.

THE METANATIONAL FIRM IN CONTEXT: COMPETITION IN KNOWLEDGE-DRIVEN INDUSTRIES

The increasing pace of global competition has recast the balance between multinational corporations’ (MNCs’) needs to protect the knowledge that underlies their competitive advantages and their needs to continually create new knowledge. This essay will discuss MNCs’ knowledge-seeking strategies as industry-level phenomena. I will argue that knowledge-seeking strategies demand a concept of industries both as arenas for competition and as global knowledge networks within which firms collaborate to innovate. Contemporary MNCs face challenges to function not only as self-contained production systems that internationalize in the search for efficiency and markets, but also as open systems globally seeking knowledge and innovations. Metanational strategies and organizations represent a new response to these challenges. I present empirical evidence of distinctive metanational industry opportunities and organizational responses from the emergence of the global flat panel display industry. The essay concludes with a framework that outlines the characteristics of a global knowledge-driven generic strategy as an alternative and synthesis of generic product-driven strategies of cost-leadership and differentiation.

Managing New Industry Creation: Global Knowledge Formation and Entrepreneurship in High Technology

This book concerns industry creation as knowledge creation. The authors argue that a new class of global, knowledge-driven manufacturing industries has emerged in which learning, continuity, and speed define competition. In these new industries, access to knowledge creation processes matters more than ownership of physical assets. Managing New Industry Creation distills principles that managers can use to seize leadership for their companies as these new industries emerge.