Research on Horizontal Collaboration Model of Silicon Intellectual Property Providers

• Main Authors: Yu-Shan Chang, 張毓珊
• Other Authors: 蔣明晃
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/10703559953942341496

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 商學研究所 === 92 === With the advances in semiconductor manufacturing technology and the trend of “System on a Chip”, “Intellectual Property (IP)”, which is reusable IC design component, has become an important concept in IC design industry. Since 90s, IC design industry has gradually disintegrated into three major businesses: IC product design, IP component, and design service. Since most IP providers have different IP technology and core competences, more and more IP providers start to collaborate with one another in order to obtain complementary resources or abilities to provide complete IC design solutions to customers. A trend of “horizontal collaboration” has been happening. The goal of this research is then to explore how each IP provider collaborates with one another under the new business paradigm. Seventeen IP providers were first selected as the sample companies and classified into four patterns of business models, which include (1) IP vendors who provide Star-IP or specialized techniques, (2) IP vendors who provide IP components with multiple functions, (3) IP vendors who provide EDA tools as their core business, and (4) IP vendors who provide design service and turnkey service as their core businesses. Within the four patterns of business models, five representative IP providers are further chosen as the focus of case study and in-depth interviews were conducted within these five companies. Through interviews and information collection of these five companies, we found that the most common horizontal collaboration model in IP industry is the collaboration between two companies to provide a complete solution to customers by combining complementary IP services such as EDA tools, core IP technology and design service. During the collaboration process, however, some difficulties might occur before and after the contract stage. We used Transaction Cost theory to explain why the collaboration will mostly occur and how to solve the difficulties during the collaboration process. At last, twelve quasi-propositions are proposed which can be used for the future validation research directions.