Embeddedness of innovations:

Since the rapid decline of the global semiconductor markets in 2000, the restructuration of the global production networks in this industrial field made Taiwan semiconductor firms have caught up the technology from the world leading IC firms even faster than before. Consequently, innovations have become the dominant belief of industrial upgrading in this industry. This paper will propose a framework of inter-organizational technological collaboration networks on patent innovations with considerations of the Taiwan contexts. We build up the longitudinal data on a firm’s ego technological collaboration networks and patents from 2001 to 2005, and attempt to examine the effects of the network mechanisms of technology leverage networks on the patent innovations. The state role (or collaboration ties with ITRI, Industrial Technology Research Institute) is getting declining in the patent creation, and those weaker or smaller firms tend to depend on more collaborative ties with ITRI. However, the status signal mechanism seemed to become more important in the patent innovations. Those firms with more overlapping technological collaboration ties with other firms in Taiwan semiconductor industry tend to create more patents. The path dependence mechanism (measured by repeated ties with the same collaborators) still plays important role in keeping trustful technology knowledge sharing relations which are advantageous for the subsequent patent innovations.