Abstract
In recent years, Taiwan, as a "boss island", has witnessed a new wave of promoting entrepreneurship aiming for industrial transformation. We find that much of this movement across the country are actually cultural constructs. Using the concept of "cultural regime," this thesis analyzes two different waves of promoting entrepreneurship in post-war Taiwan: the first wave in the 1980s, which promotes entrepreneurship in the semiconductor industry, and the second wave in the 2010s, which promotes youth entrepreneurship. This Thesis focuses on the changes of the cultural dynamics over time, and the relation between dominant concepts, institutional fields, and individual practices, in order to find the causes and possible blind spots behind recent entrepreneurial fever. Our investigation shows that the dominant concept of innovation and entrepreneurial culture regimes in Taiwan has changed: from the complex of national sentiment and serving the country with technology, to "start up with a new technology", to the latest one, "save Taiwan's economy with entrepreneurship", emphasizing the importance of young entrepreneurs and learning from the silicon valley. The overall mechanism of promoting has also changed. In the past, it's a top-down approach, with critical institutes like ITRI and NCTU continually building up a powerful entrepreneur image. Over time, it has changed to a decentralized network in the private sector. Under the concept of "entrepreneurial ecosystem", the "startup circle" has been integrated and begins to cooperate and/or compete with the government while promoting entrepreneurship in Taiwan. In contrast with mainstream discourses, which renders entrepreneurship merely as economic practices, I argue that entrepreneurship is also a cultural learning process, based on the comparison of two different waves. The culture regimes in different waves provide distinct entrepreneurial images for actors and guide their actions. Also, the transformation of regimes shows the changing roles of cultural production in the government and private sectors. While countries around the globe compete to search for their own competitive advantages, by re-examining entrepreneurial waves using the concept of cultural regime, we would like to point out the flaw in the dominant discourse: it privileges the silicon valley model while ignoring the fact that Taiwan's industrial achievement results from the ability to occupy a unique position in the global production network. However, linking local technology communities and young entrepreneurs cannot simply rely on building alternative discourses. Taiwan needs a corresponding cultural regime to bring about a meaningful industrial transformation.