Academic-launched business ventures could be a new direction for the nation’s industrial development, as over the past four years, 103 academic teams have raised more than NT$5.3 billion (US$182.97 million) and founded 22 companies through the “TRUST-U” program, the Ministry of Science and Technology said on Saturday.
While Ministry of Economic Affairs data show the average five-year survival rate of start-ups is about 57 percent, and even fewer turn a profit, Chen Ping-hei (陳炳煇), a professor of engineering at National Taiwan University, said that one type of company founder offers more promising results.
Fewer than 100 people over the past two to three decades have left academia in Taiwan to start their own companies, but of those, 10 founded firms that are now listed and worth hundreds of billions of New Taiwan dollars, including five valued at more than NT$10 billion, Chen said.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
For example, eMemory Technology — which is worth NT$42 billion — was founded by Charles Hsu (徐清祥), who was chairman of National Tsing Hua University’s Institute of Electronics Engineering before leaving to start his firm, Chen said.
“Scholastic entrepreneurship should be the model for the next stage of Taiwanese industry,” said Chen, who used to help run the TRUST-U program.
Over the past four years, 103 teams working on 125 projects have received NT$3.55 billion in government funding to help them turn their research into viable enterprises, and 22 companies have been launched as a result, Chen said.
Those 22 start-ups have been able to raise NT$5.3 billion, far more than the average NT$60 million in technical transfer revenue that each university receives annually, which proves the viability of investing in start-ups from academia, he said.
One such venture, NeoPower Technologies, is a green energy management technology firm founded by professors from National Taiwan Normal University (Shida) and National Formosa University, including Hung Yi-hsuan (洪翊軒), chairman of Shida’s undergraduate program of vehicle and energy engineering.
Hung said that he recognized the trend toward scholastic entrepreneurship and decided to draw upon his experience working with industry leaders while at the Industrial Technology Research Institute.
He received funding from the Ministry of Education to hire doctoral candidates, saving a significant amount on initial costs and allowing his start-up to develop products quickly, Hung said.
Many of those students joined the company full-time after receiving their doctorates, he added.
However, not all start-ups go smoothly, as Sean Chen (陳學仕), a professor of materials science and engineering at Shida, can attest.
After researching quantum materials for two decades, Chen founded HsinLight in 2018 to respond to needs in the display panel industry.
In the beginning, he did both research and marketing, but found it to be difficult and less effective than receiving grants for research papers, he said, adding that he was still determined to transform his research into a direct contribution to the industry.
To help start-ups develop, the government should provide a one-to-one subsidy, Chen said.
Academics have also said that patent fees are another challenge facing their start-ups.
Such enterprises largely owe their success to their proprietary patents, but Ministry of Education statistics show the number of university-held patents has been dropping due to increasing renewal fees, falling from NT$1.24 billion in the 2016 academic year to NT$1.02 billion in 2018.
Additional reporting by Rachel Lin
AGGRESSION: China’s latest intrusions set a new benchmark for its ‘gray zone’ tactics and possibly a new pattern that it would attempt to normalize, a researcher said China’s latest military exercises represent a new challenge to Taiwan’s legal authority to demarcate its borders in the Taiwan Strait, a defense expert said, adding that the fleets in the latest exercises were likely the most powerful the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ever assembled. The PLA conducted military exercises from Sunday last week to 6am on Friday, which encompassed large swathes of the western Pacific, including the Taiwan Strait and waters off the Philippines and Guam, National Policy Foundation associate research fellow Chieh Chung (揭仲) said on Friday. The Ministry of National Defense said that it detected 70 warship and 162 aircraft
DOMESTIC MARKET: To protect the livelihoods of local egg farmers, the government adopted a new method for releasing imported eggs, the agriculture minister said More than 54 million imported eggs will be disposed, as their expiration date has passed, Minister of Agriculture Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said yesterday. Chen made the remarks at a news conference in Taipei, explaining the flow of imported eggs following recent controversies regarding the products. The ministry introduced a special egg import program to address a nationwide egg shortage earlier this year. However, controversies have risen in recent weeks. These included an accusation that the government helped some egg importing companies over others, eggs imported from Brazil that had an incorrect expiration date, and egg shipments from Brazil that were found
PACIFIC OCEAN: Defense experts have warned that the ‘Shandong,’ China’s second largest aircraft carrier, poses a serious threat to eastern Taiwan’s defenses The drills conducted by the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong in the Western Pacific last week were more aimed at showcasing China’s military capabilities to the US rather than toward Taiwan, a Taiwanese defense expert said yesterday. Lin Yin-yu (林穎佑), an assistant professor at Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, said the drills which involved dozens of warplanes sought to test China’s anti-access and area denial capabilities should the US and its allies attempt to interfere in a cross-strait conflict. Lin said that the latest Chinese drills coincided with a joint maritime exercise conducted by the US, South Korea
Thousands of bottles of Sriracha have been returned or destroyed after the discovery of excessive sulfur dioxide, a bleaching agent, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Tuesday. About 12,600 bottles totaling 9,991.8kg of the hot sauce imported from the US by Emporium Corp (河洛企業) were flagged at the border for containing illegal levels of sulfur dioxide, the FDA said in its regular border inspection announcement. Inspectors discovered 0.5g per kilogram of the common bleaching agent and preservative, higher than the 0.03g permitted, it said. As it is the first time within six months the product has been flagged, Sriracha products from
RSS