Agility and information technology diffusion in the semiconductor industry

Abstract

New product development in the semiconductor industry is characterized by products with a high level of intellectual property content, and ever-decreasing product development cycles, designed by very scarce engineering talent. The foundation of the success of many semiconductor companies is their ability to respond quickly to turbulent market conditions. This ability is contingent on intra-organizational and interorganizational factors, which will be described in this paper. Firms are attempting to overcome these agility-related challenges by developing and deploying IT-based responses. This paper takes a practitioner perspective. The authors have a combined experience of over 35 years in the semiconductor industry. © 2005 by International Federation for Information Processing. All rights reserved.