Carrying 40-kilogram backpacks, Shen and two friends went on a 13-day trek through Taiwan's central mountain range, overcoming mountain ridges to traverse the heart of Taiwan. Faced with bamboo forests or fields of waist-high miscanthus grass without any clear markers, the three relied on a compass and map to slowly navigate a path, getting lost many times. But step by step, working their way through ravines and valleys and over ridges, they eventually completed their impressive journey.

"We were often baffled, but we still wanted to move forward, step by step," the 42-year-old Shen recalls with a laugh.

Shen would go on to found eMemory with his graduate adviser, Charles Hsu. The company, Taiwan's first silicon intellectual property enterprise, would emerge as one of the world's leading licensers of semiconductor technology, its success built by persevering in "taking sure-footed steps."

Over the past 10 years, Shen has turned the technology developer and intellectual property vendor into the world's biggest provider of embedded non-volatile memory products.

In the past five years, eMemory has seen sales grow by more than 30 percent a year, and turnover surpassed NT$800 million in 2010. But what truly amazes observers is its gross profit margin of 70 percent.

The company's reach could easily be compared with that of microprocessor IP vendor ARM Ltd., which has a 90-percent share of the mobile processor device market and has left Intel Corp. in the dust.

If ARM is considered the heart of mobile computing, then eMemory is the brains behind mobile phones, remote controllers and screens, providing ways to store information to ensure that the mobile device does not develop "amnesia."

Yet eMemory lost its way in its first two years, placing its bet on the Taiwanese semiconductor industry's strong suit – manufacturing. It started by producing 0.25-micron flash memories, putting it on a par with Intel. But within 18 months, Intel introduced 0.15-micron processes, forcing eMemory to painfully abandon producing products and turn its efforts to carving out a new business model based on licensing intellectual property.

"The road we took was navigated slowly. Mountains don't move, but roads do," said Shen, the leader of a mountain climbing club during his college days, explaining that looking for a new path was anything but unfamiliar.

Shen still remembers when he was 32 and a young engineer, traveling with Hsu to Osaka to visit Mitsubishi Electric for the first time with his computer in tow and struggling to get through a presentation in English.

But Mitsubishi would later become eMemory's first major customer. The profits were not huge, but the cash flow was steady. As the company made inroads into the supply chains of more major vendors, rights fees began rolling in. Over time, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., United Microelectronics Corp.,  Qualcomm Inc., Broadcom Corp., MediaTek Inc., and Morningstar Inc. would all become eMemory customers.

"From the time I was young, I never thought about achieving something great," Shen says, but he believes that as long as one carefully takes each step forward, one's path will gradually become clear.

Translated from the Chinese by Luke Sabatier