Evolution of the open industrial innovation policy: The Taiwanese experience

In the early 1970s, the Taiwanese government recognized that an island country such as Taiwan with scant natural resources and a limited domestic market needed to develop high-tech industries for sustained economic growth. However, for over a decade, it was thought that no existing industry in Taiwan could lead in the development of such industries. The government assisted in the initial development of domestic high-tech industries by supplying the fundamental expertise required. The government adopted the Technology Development Program (TDP) and contracted out projects to nonprofit research institutes, which then developed and transferred the applied industrial technologies to domestic industries to build new high-tech industries or upgrade current industrial technologies. To accelerate domestic technology, the TDP has also entrusted private corporations with R&D projects; further, it urges the academic sector to expand innovative researches that would benefit the industries. The TDP works with the industrial, governmental, academic, and research sectors to facilitate development in industrial innovation. This program has evolved over the past three decades as the government responded to the requirement for industrial innovation. This paper provides a clear conceptual model of the TDP´s industrial innovation policy. Three sub-models have evolved from this model: (1) the R&D and technology transfer model, (2) the R&D and cooperation model, and (3) the application-oriented and cooperation model.