The electronic components industry of our country is urgently required to continue its technological innovation and substantial development for improvement of its international competitiveness. To be better off with the rapidly changing environment, and to accelerate technological innovation as a technology-intensive industry, the electronic components industry must come up with the various types of technological innovations which can make systematic and consistent differentiations among factors influencing technological innovations, and it must also seek strategy to promote technological innovations from the view point of business management.
This thesis has attempted to achieve the following goals by the longitudinal analysis of Murata Manufacturing Company, a Japanese company which is famous for its success about technological innovations.
i) To study the relationships among the factors such as the environmental, internal capability, corporate strategy, and organizational characeristics, all of which are regarded as influential for technological innovations.
ii) What are the crucial factors and various conditions for the success of the technological innovations done by the advanced company?
iii) To propose the strategy for the technological innovations of country's electronic components industry from the case study of the advanced company's technological innovations.
Examining the opportunities for the ceramic materials suitable for the electronic components industry in the technological environment and market environment, Murata Manufacturing Company of this case study has worked out the strategy of differentiation by the combination of the company's internal capabilities such as the superb R&D capability in ceramic technology of the world, and vertical integration-type of manufacturing capability. Top management and internal characeristics of the organization which include the emphasis on the management of technology, and the highly-innovative autonomous environment enabled this consistent workout of the strategy of differentiation through technological innovations.
The followings are the major findings for the successful technological innovations as summary of the thesis:
i) Maintenance of the general technological capability by the vertical systemization of technology,
ii) Technology acqusitions of wide variety of original technology,
iii) Importance of strategic consistency for core capability,
iv) Expansion of continuous investment for R&D capability,
v) Harmony between rapid innovation in core technology and incremental innovation in manufacturing technology, and
vi) The importance of top management and organizational characteristics for technological innovations.
Finally, in order to apply the results from the conceptual study to the real situation, more substantial study is required from the dynamic view point regarding the relationships among the identification of core capability of individual industry and relevant strategy of the company, the vision of top management, motivation of organization, external environment, and holding-out of competitive edge obtained by technological innovations.
