Title: Entrepreneurship, competitive strategies, and ascending global brands from Taiwan: lessons for emerging markets

Authors: Ho-Don Yan

Addresses: Department of Economics, Feng Chia University, 100 Wen Hwa Rd., Taichung, Taiwan

Abstract: Emerging markets' growing weight in the world economy poses the necessity for our understanding of the growth strategy of their firms as the extant studies are mostly based on advanced economies. This paper shows that Taiwan's entrepreneurs first engage in practicing original equipment manufacturing (OEM) for multinational corporations (MNCs) of advanced countries in the early stage of economic development. After generating sufficient capital and capabilities, some entrepreneurs lead their firms to transform into global enterprises practicing own brand manufacturing (OBM). We highlight four elements - facilitative government, clustering effect, dealing with branding dilemma, and penetrating into foreign markets - that are instrumental for Taiwanese firms to go through this upgrading transformation. The experience of Taiwanese firms provides useful lessons for emerging markets' firms that target strategies of catching-up and forging-ahead, as well as for academia to enrich our understanding of the entrepreneurial process of firm growth and firm transformation in emerging markets.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; firm transformation; leadership; own brand manufacturing; OBM; original equipment manufacturing; OEM; strategic management; Taiwan; competitive strategies; ascending global brands; emerging markets; multinational corporations; MNCs; firm growth; facilitative government; clustering effect; branding dilemma; foreign market penetration; catching up; forging ahead.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2013.052991

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2013 Vol.10 No.3, pp.325 - 344

Published online: 21 Nov 2013 *

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