Morris Chang

Morris Chung-Mou Chang (; born 10 July 1931) is a Taiwanese-American billionaire businessman and electrical engineer who pioneered the foundry model of semiconductor fabrication. He is regarded as the founder of Taiwan's semiconductor industry.

Chang is the founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's first and largest semiconductor foundry. He was the company's chief executive officer (CEO) from 1987 to 2005, and retired as its chairman in 2018. , his net worth is estimated at US$4.6billion.

After attending Harvard University, Chang earned three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a doctorate from Stanford University. He built his business career first in the United States and then subsequently in Taiwan. From 1958 to 1983, Chang worked at Texas Instruments (TI), becoming its vice president. He then left TI in 1983 and was briefly the president and chief operating officer (COO) of General Instrument. He founded TSMC in 1987.

Early life

Chang was born in the city of Ningbo, situated within Chekiang in China, in 1931. When he was young, he wanted to become a novelist or journalist, though his father persuaded him otherwise. The elder Chang was an official in charge of finance for the Yin county government and later a bank manager. Due to his father's career and the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), the Chang family moved to Nanjing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Chongqing and Shanghai.

Chang spent most of his primary school years in British Hong Kong between the ages of six and eleven. In 1941, the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong began and Chang's family went back to Shanghai and Ningbo to live for a few months, eventually making their way to the wartime capital of Chongqing. In 1948, as China was in the height of the restarted Chinese Civil War, a year before People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established and the Republic of China (ROC)'s retreat to Taiwan, Chang again moved to Hong Kong.

Education in the United States

In 1949, Chang moved to the United States to attend Harvard University. He transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in his sophomore year and received his bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1952 and 1953, respectively, and a Master of Engineering in 1955. Chang failed two consecutive doctoral qualification examinations and eventually left MIT without obtaining a PhD. In 1955, he turned down a job offer from Ford Motor Company and joined Sylvania Semiconductor, then known as a small semiconductor division of Sylvania Electric Products. He was tasked with improving germanium transistor yields, besides device development.

Three years later, he moved to Texas Instruments in 1958, which was then rapidly rising in its field. After three years at TI, he rose to manager of the engineering section of the company. It was then, in 1961, that TI decided to invest in him by giving him the opportunity to obtain his PhD degree, which he received in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1964.

Career

Chang worked on a four-transistor project for TI where the manufacturing was done by IBM. This was one of the early semiconductor foundry relationships. Also at TI, Chang pioneered the then controversial idea of pricing semiconductors "ahead of the cost curve", which meant sacrificing early profits ("short term") to gain market share and achieve manufacturing yields that would result in greater profits over an extended timeline ("long-term").

During his 25-year career (1958–1983) at Texas Instruments, he rose up in the ranks to become the group vice president responsible for TI's worldwide semiconductor business. In the late 1970s, when TI's focus turned to calculators, digital watches and home computers, Chang felt like his career focused on semiconductors was at a dead end at TI.

Chang left TI and later became president and chief operating officer of General Instrument Corporation (1984–1985).

Taiwan

In the early 1980s, while still at Texas Instruments, Chang witnessed TI's factory in Japan achieving twice the chip production yield as TI's factory in Texas. Observing that the staff and technicians in Japan are better qualified and had lower turnover, and failing to recruit the same caliber of staff in the United States, he concluded that future of advanced manufacturing appeared to be in Asia.

After he left General Instrument Corporation, Sun Yun-suan, Premier of the Republic of China (ROC), recruited him to become chairman and president of the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan, where the ROC government is now based, having lost the mainland. This marked his return to the ROC, initially thought to last for a few years, three decades after he left during the chaotic Chinese Civil War mainly between the People's Republic of China and the ROC.

As the head of a government-sponsored non-profit, he was in charge of promoting industrial and technological development in Taiwan. Chang founded TSMC in 1987 thanks to transfer of production technology and license of intellectual property from Philips in exchange for 27.6 percent equity and financing from the government's National Development Fund, Executive Yuan for 48.3 percent stake. This is the beginning of the period where firms increasingly saw value in outsourcing their manufacturing capabilities to Asia. Soon, TSMC became one of the world's most profitable chip makers. Chang left ITRI in 1994 and became chairman of Vanguard International Semiconductor Corporation from 1994 to 2003 while continuing as chairman of TSMC. In 2005, he handed TSMC's CEO position to Rick Tsai.

In June 2009, Chang returned to the position of TSMC's CEO once again. The same year, Chang performed the role of Master Dragon in the first episode of “Let’s Go Guang!”, an animated Chinese-learning program for children. In 2016, MIT named Building E52 the “Morris and Sophie Chang Building” in honor of Chang and his wife. Building E52 is the original home of the MIT Sloan School of Management and headquarters of the MIT Department of Economics.

On June 5, 2018, Chang announced his retirement from TSMC, succeeded by C.C. Wei as CEO and Mark Liu as chairman. Chang was awarded the Order of Propitious Clouds, First Class in September 2018.

Chang has served as Presidential Envoy of the Republic of China (Taiwan), under the name Chinese Taipei, to APEC several times. He represented Chen Shui-bian in 2006. Tsai Ing-wen appointed Chang to the same role six times from 2018 to 2023.

In an interview with the Brookings Institution in 2022, Chang said the US federal government’s efforts to increase onshore chip manufacturing by spending tens of billions of dollars would be a very expensive and wasteful exercise in futility. He believed the US would increase onshore semiconductor manufacturing somewhat at a very high cost, and produce at high unit costs, rendering it unable to compete with factories like TSMC. Chang said TSMC chairman Mark Liu decided to invest US$12 billion in Arizona at the urging of the US government.

Personal life

Chang obtained American citizenship in 1962.

Chang met his first wife, Christine Chen, when he was at MIT and she was in Boston University. They married in 1952, when they were both 22 years old. They separated by the end of 1981 but did not divorce for the sake of their daughter, Chang Hsiao-lin, until 1991, shortly before she graduated from college. Chang married his second wife, Sophie Chang, a cousin of Foxconn founder Terry Gou, in 2001. He has two stepdaughters through his second marriage.

Affiliations

* National Academy of Engineering (US)
* MIT Corporation, MIT's board of trustees, Life Member Emeritus
* Goldman Sachs member of board of directors (2001–2002)
* Advisor to the Office of the President of the Republic of China
* Committee of 100

Honorary doctorates

* National Chengchi University, 2007
* Asia University, Taiwan, 2015

Awards and recognitions

* 1999, Exemplary Leadership Award from the Fabless Semiconductor Association (now Global Semiconductor Alliance), the first recipient of the award; now the award bears his name, "Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award".
* 2000, IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal for Exceptional Contributions to Microelectronics Industry.
*2002 National Academy of Engineering Member
* 2005, Nikkei Asia Prize for Regional Growth
* 2007, Computer History Museum Fellow Award, for dramatically accelerating the production of semiconductor-based devices and systems by developing an independent semiconductor manufacturing foundry.
* 2008 Robert N. Noyce Award from the Semiconductor Industry Association (US)
* 2011, IEEE Medal of Honor.
* 2011, Order of Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon from the Republic of China.
* 2014 SPIE Visionary Award
* 2018, Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon from the Republic of China.
* 2024, Order of Dr Sun Yat-sen with Grand Cordon from the Republic of China. Republished as:

Authored books

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*

See also

* Taiwanese Americans

References

External links

Stanford engineering hero lecture: Morris Chang in conversation with President John L. Hennessy 2014

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chang, Morris
1931 births
Businesspeople from Ningbo
Chongqing Nankai Secondary School alumni
Nanyang Model High School alumni
Harvard University alumni
Texas Instruments people
Members of the Committee of 100
Living people
IEEE Medal of Honor recipients
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
Taiwanese mechanical engineers
20th-century Taiwanese businesspeople
Engineers from Zhejiang
Taiwanese chief executives
Senior advisors to the Office of the President of the Republic of China
Billionaires from Zhejiang
MIT School of Engineering alumni
Stanford University School of Engineering alumni
Taiwanese company founders
Recipients of the Order of Propitious Clouds
Recipients of the Order of Brilliant Star
Winners of the Nikkei Asia Prize
Asia Game Changer Award winners
21st-century Taiwanese businesspeople
American electrical engineers
Taiwanese electrical engineers
20th-century Taiwanese engineers
Taiwanese expatriates in the United States
Taiwanese engineers
General Instrument people