Ghee Hiang heritage: the Chinese innovating perseverance of tacit knowledge last few generations in Malaysia

Abstract

Southeast Asia with its historical concentration of ethnic Chinese remains an important economic hub encouraging cross-disciplinary inquiries on themes relating to businesses, R&D, tacit knowledge development, enterprise development and innovation. To date, there has been little empirical research on the capacity of Malaysian Chinese family businesses relating to the China factor. In industrializing Malaysia, where Chinese family small-and-medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) are undergoing a shift from the earlier generation, there is little research on their capacity to develop the tacit knowledge of the founding generation mostly inherited from China, before starting a business in Malaysia. This assessment of Ghee Hiang’s heritage evaluates how a new generation has been innovated their products. Interestingly, tradition may enable these Malaysian Chinese firms to innovate by building on more reliable knowledge and resources, extensively validated over time, and hence reduce development and utilization costs and increase profits from new products. The well trained of 2nd and 3rd generations has been innovated the tacit knowledge to elicit strong and positive feelings on “Chinese” identity, increasing the value of new products through R&D by embedding past knowledge and facilitating the legitimacy of innovative functionalities and the likelihood of obtaining market acceptance. Ghee Hiang evokes memories and experiences of Malaysian Penang Chinese legendary in sesame oil and traditional pastries production.