Tracing National and Global Forces in a Taiwanese SME's Product Innovation

Taiwan's competitiveness in the global arena has often been attributed to the country's dynamic small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In the most recent decade, the Taiwanese government has increased support to innovative SMEs, and with the emergence of new fields such as biotechnology, companies with highly innovation-driven agendas are surfacing. The innovation focus provides not only new opportunities but also challenges for Taiwanese SMEs. In this article I aim to increase the understanding of how national and global forces affect SME innovation in Taiwan. To this end, I use an industrial network approach to trace the national and global interdependencies that follow the network of a Taiwanese SME in the biopharmaceutical sector.