Key Points
Never has anyone so old created a business worth so much as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, known simply as TSMC, the chip manufacturer that produces essential parts for computers, phones, cars, artificial-intelligence systems and many of the devices that have become part of our daily lives..
As the demand for chips intensifies and U.S.-China relations deteriorate, the world increasingly depends on TSMC, and there are lots of questions about the future of this company that Chang founded on a geopolitically vulnerable island..
There was no certainty at all that Taiwan would give me the chance to build a great semiconductor company, but the possibility existed, and it was the only possibility for me," Chang says..
. TI handled every part of chip production, but what worked in Texas would not translate to Taiwan.The only way that he could build a great company in his new home was to make a new sort of company altogether, one with a business model that would exploit the countrys strengths and mitigate its many weaknesses..
For innovations of that kind, I think people of a more advanced age are perhaps even more capable than people of a younger age." Chang says the idea behind TSMC was also the result of the personal philosophy that hed developed over the course of his long career..
