Taiwan should look to the entrepreneurship programs of many innovative universities in Europe as a model to promote interaction between academic circles and industry, Huang Wen-hsiung (黃文雄), vice chairman of the National Science Council, said yesterday.
Huang has recently concluded a trip to Europe. He said that during his visits to several science parks there, he was impressed with the success of university programs to support the establishment of spin-off companies.
Accompanied by the council's director of international programs and director of humanities and social sciences, Huang visited Sweden, Finland and Britain in the past two weeks.
He said the science parks in Scandinavia are mostly research and development-oriented, and universities are supporting industrial companies which usually are small in scale.
While Taiwan is planning for the establishment of biotechnology parks, Huang said that the country can learn from the Scandinavian models.
Many innovative universities in Europe have developed successful models of collaboration between academic circles and industry, and these universities in Denmark, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Finland, the UK, the Netherlands and France have formed a continent-wide network -- the European Consortium of Innovative Universities.
Huang said that Taiwan's production-oriented science-based industrial park is also recognized internationally as a successful model with an annual production value amounting to US$3 billion.
Many of the integrated circuit, information technology and communications companies based in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park (
Taiwan's high-tech sectors -- electronics, optoelectronics, automation, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, energy and environment protection -- have benefited greatly from ITRI's technology-transfer programs.
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