What A*STAR can really learn from the Taiwanese

Much of the content of this article was taken from the following link from the Taiwanese government website. This article was written some time ago as an elaboration on my earlier blogpost at my blogspot account.

Our circumstances in Singapore is the same as what Taiwan experienced during the 1960s. Its small and medium enterprises within the science and technology sector possessed limited resources for Research and Development (R and D). Thus, the Taiwanese government addressed this situation by coming up with Science and Technology plans that lasted for a duration of 12 years. This involved measures aimed at strengthening scientific research and education, and supplementing R and D to meet national goals.

Policy-making aside, the Taiwanese government also played an important role in promoting upstream and mid-stream research. Upstream research comprises of basic research undertaken by the universities. Midstream-research comprises applied research and technological development that are carried out by government research agencies and state-run enterprises. Thus, the moral of the story is that it is equally important to pay close attention to the basic science and its application aspects. That was why some observers advocated the importance of focusing on basic scientific research despite the desire of our government to develop Singapore into a biotech hub brimming with cutting-edge technology. Hence, our priority is about making scientific discoveries as much as it is about filing new technological patents.

In the 1970s, the National Science Council of Taiwan established the Science and Technology Information Center to provide academic research departments and industrial sector with information on science and technology. The Center is responsible for the collection, analysis, and processing of R and D information on science and technology gathered at home and abroad. It eventually became a well-established location for collecting, processing, exchanging, and offering information on science and technology. Such is the level of synergy the private sector enjoys with the Taiwanese government that little wonder the former is at the forefront of technological development. Thus, the lesson we can learn from the Taiwanese is really the importance of promoting greater synergy between our local enterprises within the technological sector and our government, which involves the establishment of open-ended communication lines dedicated to information-sharing. For instance, the computational labs at A*STAR can share with our local enterprise, Creative Technology, R and D information on the latest memory chips implemented in digital audio players.

In a bid to strengthen innovation by the private sector, the Taiwanese government opened its national laboratories to the private sector for R and D. This prompted the development of an incubator center by the Industrial Technology Research Institute to promote the development of high-tech enterprises and establishment of new businesses. An open laboratory was also established to bring together local enterprises and the Industrial Technology Research Institute to conduct R and D, which upgraded the technology level of the local industries. Thus, in a way, the Taiwanese government is sharing its intellectual property with its local enterprises. Our government has to realize that in order to spearhead a technological drive (be it in biosciences, information technology, etc), its investment in research should never yield a profit, which is obvious. An R and D initiative is huge form of expenditure, and whilst our government is committed to such an initiative, profiting from it shouldn’t be its raison d’etre.

What our government can do is to adopt an enabling approach to give our small medium enterprises within the technological sector one leg up through its R and D expertise developed at our national laboratories under A*STAR. The important thing we can learn from the Taiwanese success is really the need to facilitate greater synergy between our government research agencies or institutions and our local enterprises. Whilst our government may have the technical and technological expertise gleaned through research, our local enterprises possess the commercial expertise especially when it comes to selling the product. For instance, if a local enterprise wants to develop and sell an MP3 player, it would have been familiar with the product’s commercial appeal such as packaging and external designs that are the most attractive to consumers. However, this enterprise doesn’t have the R and D know-how and is reliant on a willing government to release intellectual properties on the design of memory and processing chips crucial to the device’s function. Thus, the government can play an enabling role in assisting the technological side of the development of this MP3 player, and the company will further develop the product in terms of packaging and designs. The finished product will finally hit the markets.

If our government adopts a mindset to profit from the research and charges ‘premium rates’ for the royalties involved, it will discourage our local enterprises from collaborating with the government and set back the development of our technological sector altogether. A greater synergy between our enterprises and government is quintessential for such a venture to be successful.