Abstract
The once completely unknown Nichia Corporation of Japan succeeded in commercializing blue LED technology and went on to become the world’s leading company in this field. Shuji Nakamura, the 2014 Physics Nobel Laureate (a researcher at the company at the time, and currently, Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara), made a significant contribution to this technology. Through a detailed study of the R&D process from basic research into blue LED and its later commercial development, this chapter examines how the intentional integration of Nakamura’s serendipitous awareness as a researcher together with management’s deep understanding of this serendipity drove the dialectical processes of dynamic recursive practice activities between management and Nakamura.
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Notes
- 1.
Nichia Corporation is a chemical company headquartered in Anan City in Tokushima Prefecture. The company had 640 members of staff in April of 1994, and JPY 16.7 billion sales from January to December 1993. Its main manufacturing products are phosphor materials used in CRT devices and fluorescent lighting, accounting for 80 to 90% of its sales. In addition, the company produces compound semiconductor materials, vacuum vapor deposition materials, spattering targets and electroluminescent lamps (EL) used for liquid crystal panel backlighting and other purposes. The company was founded in December 1956. When Nakamura joined in 1979, the company had around 200 members of staff, and sales were about JPY 4 billion. It was at the end of 1993 that the name of the Nichia Corporation became well known around the world. This was when the company first developed and mass produced a blue light-emitting diode with 1 cd luminosity. It had been predicted that blue light-emitting diode would be realized no earlier than the twenty-first century; high luminosity blue LED thus reached commercialization stage ahead of all expectations.
- 2.
Various compounds such as ZnSe, SiC and GaN were known as materials that could be used for blue LED. In 1989, most research into blue LED was carried out using SiC, and there were examples of low luminosity light-emitting diodes being manufactured (Japan Applies Physics Association Meeting 1989). ZnSe was also a popular focus of research, and it gained attention as a promising candidate for blue LED and blue semiconductor laser applications. In contrast, not many researchers were looking at GaN—at the time study groups into ZnSe were always fully attended, whereas those focusing on GaN were only ever attended by fewer than 10 people.
- 3.
In the two-flow method, raw material flows from the right (red arrow) while carrier gas flows down from above (blue arrow) on to the substrate (green), which helps to control turbulence (See Fig. 4.1).
- 4.
When Nakamura began successfully creating a GaN thin film with the two-flow MOCVD method, the company president put even more capital and personnel into Nakamura’s research group. At this point the president showed his enthusiasm for a commercial product. The company had already spent hundreds of millions of yen researching the GaN light-emitting diode, a huge decision and risky leap into the unknown for Nichia—an arduous journey to success. Obviously, having made such an investment, the president wanted to get the technology to the market as quickly as possible.
- 5.
“Kiyomizu” refers to Mount Otowa Kiyomizu Temple, headquarters of the Kita Hoso sect of Buddhism, located in the Higashiyama district of Kyoto City. Kiyomizu Temple has a type of balcony stage that is perched on a high jutting cliff, and legend has it that when people jumped from this cliff, if their prayers were answered they would remain uninjured. Even those who did lose their lives by jumping from the balcony could become Buddhas. As a result, it is said that people continually jumped from this balcony. In this context, the expression means to act with the same hell-bent resolve as someone who has decided to jump from the balcony of Kiyomizu Temple. This expression is often used when a decision is made to purchase a very costly item or to offer something at an extremely discounted price.
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Kodama, M., Yasuda, T. (2017). Managing Serendipity Through Ma Thinking: Lessons of the Invention and Commercialization of Blue LED (Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics). In: Kodama, M. (eds) Ma Theory and the Creative Management of Innovation. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59194-4_4
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