Abstract
This research explores IC design industry’s opportunity recognition, technology entrepreneurship, and intellectual capital, as well as the transformation of knowledge gaps into local IC design firms’ competitive advantages. IC design firms’ innovation and entrepreneurial opportunities are generated by the systematical collection, integration, learning, and internal or external sharing of various types of knowledge, while continuously creating and utilizing new knowledge during the process.This research focuses on building the ontology of organization knowledge with an analysis and synthesis of models in literature, in-depth interview of IC design firms, and ontological analysis of intellectual capital for fulfilling the knowledge gaps, leading to opportunity recognition and creation. The study explores the evolution of organization knowledge with the interaction with the social network in the case firms in order to improve their ability of knowledge combination and opportunity recognition in new environment. The resulting ontology framework is to represent the process the entrepreneurial case firms used to capitalize on their intellectual capital to confirm the opportunity and position in the market and create value.