In order to upgrade the level of domestic technology and product competitiveness, the Biomedical Engineering Center; the Food Industry Research and Development Institute; the Development Center for Biotechnology and other non-profit organizations have opened their laboratories to industry professionals, providing technology, resources and information, laboratory space and facilities for joint development of specific technologies or products. For the purpose of strengthening Taiwan's competitiveness, the Executive Yuan approved the establishment of the Promotion Program for Industry Innovation R&D, in 2003, with the aim of constructing an R&D community, cultivating an innovative technology industry, and promoting Taiwan's industry towards the higher value-added end of the industry scale, such as pharmaceutical contract manufacturing R&D or testing, bioinformatics, cell and tissue engineering, and Chinese herbal medicine, establishing frontier leadership, and innovative, differentiated R&D capability. Also, the government will actively promote industry to establish an innovation R&D center. Furthermore, the government has advocated strengthening of the function and environment for the innovative incubation of small and medium sized businesses and has encouraged universities, research agencies, local governments, and other private entities to establish small and medium-sized incubation centers since 1996. Such centers will primarily be responsible for providing an environment for incubating new technology, new products or to encourage companies to grow at a faster pace. As of the end of 2003, there are 34 incubation centers with biotechnology start-ups as tenants, 122 in total. |
