The Small and Medium Enterprise Administration (SMEA) on Monday unveiled a joint innovation center set up in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon.com Inc’s cloud-computing arm.
The new center is situated in the Start-up Terrace, an innovation park in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), and is aimed at fostering unicorn start-ups, the SMEA said.
AWS is not investing in the innovation center, but it is providing cloud-computing resources and other material to start-ups, as well as international marketing experience and training, SMEA Deputy Director-General Betty Hu (胡貝蒂) told the Taipei Times by telephone yesterday.
“They [start-ups] might have good ideas or products, but often lack consistent business models and financial planning capabilities,” Hu said, adding that the innovation center would provide a common training platform.
AWS corporate vice president and managing director for greater China Alex Yung (容永康) last week said that AWS would train about 2,000 professionals a year by holding courses, workshops and seminars at the center.
The SMEA said it is working on increasing the number of start-ups to 150 within three years from about 70 now.
The SMEA has also signed memorandums of understanding with the Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre and Thailand’s True Digital Park in order to boost exchanges between start-ups in the three nations, it said.
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