Abstract

During the past 30 years China's economic development has made remarkable achievements. At the same time, the Chinese enterprises have also attempted to move from being labour intensive to high-tech intensive. The Chinese high-tech industry has made preliminary achievements in some aspects, particularly in telecommunications. Huawei has been regarded the most innovative company in China. Based on the case of the Chinese telecom industry and in relation with Korean case, the paper tries to understand what type of external environment provides a window of opportunity for industry catch up, and how does the external environment affect an enterprise’s catch up pattern? This research further attempts to introduce catch up pattern joined together by external factors and internal factors. We particularly focus on deepening the understanding of low-end entry while integrating the theory of product life cycle to deduce a catch up innovation path, which can be helpful to refer by other grassroots companies in developing countries.