기회의 창으로서의 국가 간 엔지니어 이동과 디스플레이 산업 주도권 이전

Previous studies focused on the role of the mobility of engineers in the geographic diffusion of knowledge, inter-firm competition, and the performance of recipient firms. However, there is limited understanding of the role of cross-border mobility of engineers from forerunners to latecomers in catch-up. This study focuses on the abrupt cross-border mobility of engineers during business downturns, presenting it as a window of opportunity for latecomers to lead in technological learning. Based on the USPTO patent data, we longitudinally measure the cross-border mobility of engineers in the TFT-LCD industry, where leadership changes successively occurred among East Asian countries since the mid-1990s. We found that the cross-border mobility of engineers occurred radically (1) from Japan to Taiwan (2) from Korea to China, and (3) from Taiwan to China, especially after the business downturn, so-called crystal cycle. In particular, we explored the takeover of the industrial leadership by BOE leveraging the mobility of engineers. Our findings deepen the understanding of the mobility of engineers as endogenization of windows of opportunity from the perspective of latecomers’ aggressive employment of forerunners’ engineers, contributing to a nuanced view of catch-up cycle theory.