System on chip design service e-business value maximization through a novel MCDM framework Chi-Yo Huang a,⇑ , Gwo-Hshiung Tzeng b,c , Wen-Rong Jerry Ho d a Department of Industrial Education, National Taiwan Normal University, 162, He-ping East Road, Section 1, Taipei 106, Taiwan b Institute of Management of Technology, National Chiao Tung University, 1001, Ta-Hsueh Road, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan c Department of Business Administration, Kainan University, No. 1 Kainan Road, Luchu, Taoyuan 338, Taiwan d Department of Banking and Finance, Chinese Culture University, 55, Hwa-Kang Road, Yang-Ming-Shan, Taipei 111, Taiwan article info Keywords: Innovation e-Business model e-Commerce Analytic Network Process (ANP) Silicon intellectual property (SIP) Integrated circuit (IC) Semiconductor Design service abstract As the IC (integrated circuit) industry migrates to the System-on-Chip (SOC) era, the SOC design service industry is emerging. Meanwhile, in the past decade, the emergence of Internet has changed the high technology marketing approaches while e-commerce has already become one of the most efficient mar- keting channels. Thus, most leading SOC design service firms tried to leverage novel e-commerce busi- ness models to provide better services including online silicon intellectual property (SIP) sourcing, transactions, integration, etc. to assist customers in enhancing their innovation competences to shorten their time to market and thus, time to money. However, defining appropriate e-business models for com- mercializing new SIPs or SOC design services is not easy for both aspects of technology as well as business development. On one hand, from the aspect of technology, the technical site R&D or production managers are familiar with SOC technologies while do not really understand the needs of customers’ over the Inter- net. On the other hand, from the aspect of business development, the sales or marketing managers may be familiar with online customers’ needs, wants as well as demands while are unfamiliar to SOC technol- ogy developments. To overcome the above mentioned problems, an appropriate e-business model defi- nition framework can overcome this cognitive gap and maximize the value-added of online SOC design services. In this paper, a novel analytic framework based on the concept of design service custom- ers’ competence set expansions by leveraging high technology service firms’ capabilities and resources as well as novel multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques, will be proposed. The framework being proposed can be leveraged by the design service firms to define an appropriate e-business model for possible SIP or design service businesses. Based on the proposed MCDM framework, an empirical study of an SIP commercialization e-business model definition inside an SIP Mall, an SIP e-commerce mechanism being operated by a SOC design service firm, will be provided for verifying the effectiveness of this novel analytic framework. The feasibility of the proposed framework in the real world can be ver- ified by the empirical study. In the future, the novel MCDM framework can be applied to novel e-business model definitions in the SOC design service or other high technology industries. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In the past decade, the Internet has become an enabling tech- nology in almost any industry and as part of almost any strategy (Porter, 2001). Uses of the Internet and e-commerce have con- verted the traditional way of running business and have thor- oughly changed the channel of enterprise transactions (Shaw, Gardner, & Thomas, 1997). As industries in general, and high tech- nology industries in special, are being reshaped and the nature of competition changes (Raisinghani, Meade, & Schkade, 2007), decid- ing on an e-business model, a competition strategy for the market- place and a structure of business processes for the entire electronic trade course (Wang, 2001), has become daily important for modern high technology firms. As stated by Young and Johnston (2003), there are a number of traditional business strategy theories that have been used to dis- cuss business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce strategies: transac- tion cost economics, resource-based view, Porter’s market forces theory, and channel theory. However, there currently exists no comprehensive framework linking these theories into a method to rigorously assess value delivery strategies, and in particular to determine how to maximize the impact of the Internet as a value delivery channel (Young & Johnston, 2003). Raisinghani et al. (2007) also mentioned that although the strategy to rebuild a 0957-4174/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2010.12.022 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +886 936 516698; fax: +886 3 5165185. E-mail address: georgeh168@gmail.com (C.-Y. Huang). Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 7947–7962 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Expert Systems with Applications journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa