This book grows out of a five-year collaborative research project undertaken by the authors in East Asia. They have worked with firms and institutions in Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, to inquire into the micro-processes of firm-level organizational learning that underpin technology leverage in an industry such as semiconductors. The processes investigated are not specific to microchips, but can be seen working in one knowledge-intensive sector after another. Mathews and Cho argue that indeed these are the processes that will shape industrial evolution in the twenty-first century, not just in East Asia but in the developed world as well. Tiger Technology concludes with an important observation - that wealth can be generated just as much through management of technology diffusion as through conventional concerns with innovation, provided the institutions of leverage are carefully constructed.

List of figures; List of tables; Preface; Abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. The 'Real' East Asian Miracle: 1. Tiger chips: the rise of East Asia in the global semiconductor industry; 2. Technology leverage as latecomer strategy; Part II. National Institutional Pathways: 3. The Tangbun boom and the chaebol: how Korea did it; 4. A cat can look at a king: how Taiwan did it; 5. Jack and the beanstalk: how Singapore and Malaysia are doing it; Part III. The Technology Leverage Strategy: 6. East Asian semiconductor industries: national strategies and sustainability; 7. Limits to technology leverage strategies; 8. National systems of economic learning: lessons from East Asia; Appendix I. Exchange rates: 1975¿97; Appendix II. Chronology; Glossary; Bibliography; Index.