National systems of economic learning: the case of technology diffusion management in East Asia

The success of East Asian firms in high technology industries such as semiconductors and information technology products is now an established fact. Against all the advantages of incumbents' these latecomer firms have found ways to insert themselves in worldwide production systems and to compete in advanced markets. But this very success poses a number of challenges for organizational and management theory. According to the conventional view, firms ground their success in R&D and innovation. When the firm wishes to expand abroad, it exports its technology. Yet it is clear that successful firms from East Asia have not built their competences on conventional foundations through R&D. Nor have they been recipients of technologies transferred by advanced firms for reasons to do with product cycles. On the contrary, the East Asian firms and agencies act as instigators of the processes of technology acquisition, acting in accordance with their own strategic impulses. Nevertheless a coherent and plausible account of East Asian success in knowledge intensive industries can be built on the basis of a ‘competence’ or ‘dynamic capabilities’ approach, where the focus is not on