Taiwanâs original economic system is not working anymore. The hardware, integrated circuit industry has really declined, compared to the condition in 2010. Naturally, we must find a replacement. (Principal at a startup accelerator, 1 Taipei)
From 18 March to 10 April 2014, students in Taiwan occupied the government building housing the Legislative and Executive Yuan, an event which would become known as the Sunflower Movement . They were protesting the passing of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) by the ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT ), without a proper review process. KMT argued that the trade agreement between the Peopleâs Republic of China (PRC ) and Taiwan (ROC) was vital to Taiwanâs economy. However, the occupation indicated a widespread fear of how close trading links between the PRC and Taiwan might leave the island country vulnerable to Beijingâs political pressure. As one scholar noted at the time:
For the opponents of the CSSTA, in a fear that also echoes the martial law period, Taiwanese identity will dissolve in a media, cultural and educational environment gradually dominated by the Chinese identity politics that will come with mainland investment. (Harrison 2014)
As one of the four âAsian tigersâ âcountries which experienced rapid economic and social development in the 1970s and 1980sâTaiwan has been renowned for its consumer electronics industry and its demonstrated expertise in the production of hardware, including microprocessors, chips and motherboards. Taiwanese corporations manufacture most of the major global computer and mobile phone brands under the original equipment manufacturing (OEM ) system (in which the equipment is purchased and sold under another companyâs brand name), albeit the actual assembling processes are mostly done offshore, especially in mainland China .
With the increased competition in the global trade of electronics goods, I wanted to examine if the Internet and mobile technology sector could provide a way to diversify and rejuvenate the ailing electronics industry . I therefore went to Taipei in June 2014 and stayed three months, hosted by the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, the countryâs leading research organisation. I planned to investigate an ecosystem surrounding digital entrepreneurs, which consisted of the entrepreneursâtheir resources, networks and cultureâas well as capital and the regulatory environment (Up Global 2014). Such an ecosystem includes individual start-uppers and organisations such as accelerators and business incubators, training programmes, conferences and events, crowdfunding platforms, government departments, co-working spaces and universities. What are the relationships between the new media sector and the broader economic, social and political conditions? The Sunflower Movement was at the back of my mind. I expected to see social and political changes in Taiwan, but I wondered if these changes would have direct effects on the people who were starting Internet and mobile companies. The discourse of change was in the air, although my academic colleagues and the entrepreneurs I interviewed lamented on the lack of immediate impact following the Sunflower Movement .
I returned to Europe after this period of fieldwork armed with the transcripts of over 70 interviews and other data. I continued to pay close attention to the political climate in Taiwan. The sense of change that I noted in the summer was heightened around the time of the local elections on 29 November 2014. The Taipei mayor election is traditionally the most important litmus test to gauge the public opinion towards the two major parties. The main contest in 2014 was between the two candidates, the independent Ko Wen-je and KMT âs Sean Lien. Ko won support from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP ), the KMTâs main opposition, and the Taiwan Solidarity Union, and he defeated Lien by nearly 17 points. Koâs campaign video captured my attention. Entitled âHow Long Has It Been Since You Last Listened to Your Kids?â, the video used visual and textual elements to convey a sombre black-and-white narrative that asked questions about a dystopic future. Though devoid of specifics, it suggested how Ko would safeguard future generations against barriers to social and economic mobility. Polls showed that Ko was indeed most popular among voters aged 20â29 and those over 60 (Sung 2014). Lienâs campaign video, âOne Worldâ, differed from Koâs by its use of break-dancers and upbeat music. Although it appealed to a younger audience, it ultimately failed to address whether or not any of his policies would benefit the young voters in Taiwan.
In September 2014 the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong began when the Standing Committee of the National Peopleâs Congress in China issued a decision on the future of the cityâs electoral process. The candidates for the Chief Executive role would be closely controlled and vetted by the Chinese state. The Umbrella Movement was inspired by the Sunflower Movement and was initially led by university students. Many of the supporters were also young students, and awareness of the event spread through social media. The occupation ended when the police cleared the central areas in Hong Kong after 79 days. I returned to Taiwan for eight months in 2016 to witness the landslide win (25 points over the KMT candidate) of DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen on 16 January, making Tsai the first female president of the country and returning the DPP to power after eight years of KMT rule. A red thread of change shaped my fieldwork experiences during both the 2014 and 2016 stays in Asia. At the same time, in Silicon Valley in 2015, three lawsuits were brought by Asian American female employees against major tech corporations and a venture capital firm. The suits alleged sex and race discrimination, which prompted me to consider the range of personal characteristics, including family, age, work experience and ethnicity, which may contribute to discrimination and act as barriers to global female tech workersâ careers. Taking the discrimination that the Asian American female workers experience, I set out to examine the impact of gender and how it intersects with other characteristics for these workers.
I became preoccupied by the social and cultural transformations taking place in Taiwan: an emerging tech sector in conjunction with a strong industrial history; the political manifestations arising out of fear of mainland China âs influences in Hong Kong and Taiwan; the popular demands for change, especially from the younger generation; and the mobility and marginality of Asian tech workers in Silicon Valley . In this introduction, I explain what a study of digital entrepreneurship from an East Asian perspective can contribute to our understanding of social and political change.
I employ the term digital entrepreneurship to refer to new economic activities that are carried out online or on mobile platforms; these are nascent businesses that provide services or products using the Internet or mobile technology. This emerging phenomenon within the digital economy has been characterised by the new technologies (computer networks) and new types of workers (the digital artisans) (Barbrook 1998). Digital artisans are mostly university-educated Millennials who want to participate in the âhipster economyâ (McRobbie 2016, pp. 50â56), inspired by the rhetoric of disruption (Scholz 2014), and who are lured by the utopian idea of âchanging the world.â Angela McRobbie describes the urban hipsters as cultural elites who understand fashion and cool lifestyle (McRobbie 2016, pp. 50â56). In an article in The Guardian entitled âSilicon Valley âs New Politics of Optimism, Radical Idealism and Bizarre Loyalties,â 2 it is asserted that most of those in executive positions in Silicon Valley share a kind of optimism about change and are supporters of the Democratic Party in terms of their political outlook. Another article about the contributions made by Silicon Valley in politics is simply entitled âChange the Worldâ (Packer 2013). In the first episode of the HBO drama series Silicon Valley, the founder of a fictional startup proudly announces during a launch party that their company âwill change the world.â Easy access to digital technology has provided an opportunity for entrepreneurs from around the world to join in the global capitalist race. Technology developed by super-startups like Uber or Lyft is duplicable, and firms the world over (for example, Ola in India, Grab in Southeast Asia, Didi Dache in China ) have adapted and localised the platforms.
In this study, which relies on my fieldwork experiences in Taiwan, I focus on the digital entrepreneurs within a startup ecosystem âa highly uncertain environment. The manufacturing industry and a strong electronics and computer sector began to experience stiff competition, and the export-oriented OEM system suffered from the effects of the global downturn of 2008, resulting in a need for the restructuring and expansion of the fields of industry. The involvement of nascent entrepreneurs in the development of Internet and mobile technologies is illustrative of the economic and social contexts in a time of change, which can have political significance. I am particularly interested in the personal characteristics of digital entrepreneurs, such as gender and class, and how they influence their experiences of the startup culture. What are the characteristics of the entrepreneurs in the nascent Internet and mobile businesses? How does digital entrepreneurship in Taiwan, and its Asian tiger counterparts in Hong Kong and Singapore , signal economic, social and political change? Do these entrepreneurs experience barriers to participation due to their personal characteristics? The current study investigates how start-uppers deal with the risks and precarity associated with entrepreneurship. What contribution does this study make to the academic research of the digital economy in the East Asian context? These research questions form the basis of my enquiries.
Studying Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs exploit âsituations in which new goods, services, raw materials, markets and organizing methods can be introduced through the formation of new means, ends, or means-ends relationshipsâ (Shane and Eckhardt 2003, p. 165). Entrepreneurship can be defined as the exploitation of new economic opportunities, which may include creating new products or changing existing products in order to develop fresh markets and new organisational systems (Wennekers and Thurik 1999). Entrepreneurial behaviour is based on âa focus on innovations satisfying a market need in a more satisfactory manner,â where innovation transforms inventions and ideas into economically viable entities (Stearns and Hills 1996, p. 2). Investigations of entrepreneurship may therefore include the economic system, the entrepreneurs, the risk-taking behaviour, resources, and the creation and realisation of value for individuals and societies (Stearns and Hills 1996). Entrepr...