An Exploratory Study on the Internationalization and Growth Strategies of a Taiwan-based Software Company

• Main Authors: Way-Zen Chen, 陳偉仁
• Other Authors: 李吉仁
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/09267363905126598203

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 國際企業學研究所 === 93 === Software business is characterized by low physical production cost, low replication cost, and low barriers to entry. Moreover, due to the existence of positive network externality, software products tend to falling into winner-take-all scenario in the global competition. These characteristics exert critical challenges to contenders based in a small home market, like Taiwan. Constrained by small home market and limited resource supports, even with competitive products, software companies are very difficult if not impossible to become a global winner. In general, there are two issues faced by a typical software company based in Taiwan: how to build a brand in leading markets, and how to manage the internationalization and growth strategy to sustain market development. The primary purpose of this research is to suggest a feasible strategic planning framework for a brand-name software company based in Taiwan to compete in global markets. This research will firstly present an industry analysis of software industry and then discuss how to capture global market opportunities based on locally developed advantages. First of all, we argue that software product business has greater potential for international growth than embedded software. Second, the headquarter capabilities of managing subsidiaries ion leading markets is key to internationalization success for a software company. Third, to better capture the root course of the managerial tensions between headquarter and subsidiaries, competence-based growth perspective is suggested. We therefore propose a “three-stage competence development” model, which includes (1) stage 1: developing the world-class product competences in a Taiwan headquarter, (2) stage 2: developing competence of brand marketing and synergies among business models, (3) stage 3: developing competence of brand marketing in depth. Conceptually, this model highlights the need of employing competence-based growing framework to guide resource allocation to create synergies among various different business models developed in three stages. Finally, we also suggest the usefulness of employing Parenting-Fit matrix to performance evaluation of multiple software business models. Implications of our research results to both Taiwan software companies and the government are also discussed