The Taiwan Design Center, which helps local companies become cultural innovators, is to be become the Taiwan Design Research Agency, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Chuan-neng (林全能) said yesterday.
The upgrade, expected in the first half of next year, is to accompany a budget increase to NT$530 million (US$17.4 million) from NT$424 million, Lin told a news conference at the Executive Yuan in Taipei.
The agency is a collaboration between the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Culture, Lin said, adding that the partnership also generated the Taiwan Creative Content Agency, which promotes the creation of cultural content.
Photo: Screengrab from the Taiwan Design Center’s Facebook page
The design agency is to improve design from the industry side and promote it, he said.
The center gets 41 percent of its funding from the Ministry of Economic Affairs; 40 percent from other agencies, such as the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications; and 19 percent from the private sector, Lin said.
The economic ministry seeks more participation from the private sector to increase private sector funding in the upgraded budget to 30 percent.
The World Economic Forum this year and last year named Taiwan No. 4 in innovation in its global competitiveness report, said Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), who approved the center’s upgrade.
Taiwan could drive economic growth by integrating design into industry, technology and culture to create high-value-added products, Su said, adding that design is essential for innovation.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in October promised to incorporate improved design into the robust manufacturing sector so that the “Made in Taiwan” brand could be upgraded to “Designed in Taiwan,” Su said.
The government would make fostering the nation’s design capabilities an administrative goal — one that could be more easily attained with the Taiwan Design Research Agency, Su said, adding that it would facilitate pooling of government resources.
The ministry told a weekly Cabinet meeting that it hopes that the nation can start pushing the Designed in Taiwan brand globally by 2030.
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