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. 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. 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 ==