In the era of globalization, Small and Medium Enterprises are creating the Blue Ocean to collectively promote innovative products and services, earning international praise and awards

Date: 2010-02-25

Facing the challenges of globalization, Taiwanese industries are reaching for the global market, and the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, Ministry of Economic Affairs is promoting its "Project of Innovative Integrated Service of SMEs Clusters" through the "The Cluster of Optical-grade Polymer Materials" automatic balancing product model and the "Silver Light Alley Botanical Walkway Electronic Tour Guide" of the "Beitou Hot Springs Leisure Health Cluster," which was selected by the International Forum of Design and Living Labs Global Showcase Awards respectively, showing that Taiwan's SMEs clusters has been acclaimed by International.

In order to encourages all domestic SMEs to utilize collective efforts and new added-value services to develop the economy as well as to cooperate with the Executive Yuan's current promotion of the six major emerging industries, the Small and Medium Enterprises Administration started the 4-year "Project of Innovative Integrated Service of SMEs Clusters" in 2008 to offer domestic SMEs R&D, commercialization and technical applications to create a operations mode for integrated sales and business development services. It has currently promoted 28 group/591 SMEs and helping 65 cases of innovative product development, services, and usage guidance models, creating NT$460 million in R&D investment, effectively increasing and helping enterprises collect NT$6 billion.

The automatic balancing product models selected by iF are from high-end optic-related businesses using the group platform product methods to add LED capabilities. Users first set the required weight limit, and when it is surpassed, a warning will be given, providing a more convenient, accurate and quicker platform than is currently available on the market, while at the same time breaking away from traditional product design thinking, using accurate design to increase the quality as well as gaining international approval and encouragement. Clusters are in this way more able to succeed and together prepare R&D for other products with LED capabilities, creating even more new products as well as optical-class elements, bringing domestic product design into line with global trends.

In addition, Beitou's local cultural entrepreneurs, ICT service industries and hot springs industries have come up with the "Beitou Hot Springs Leisure Health Cluster" in order to utilize Beitou's cultural assets along with smart phone devices with GPS capabilities to develop "Silver Light Alley Botanical Walkway Electronic Tour Guide" service to allow domestic and foreign tourists to explore Beitou easily, and understand the local vegetation, environment and sights better. This service has been invited to participate in the Living Labs Global Showcase Awards, winning the honor from the judges after competing with 310 outstanding applications from around the world as Taiwan's only nominee. In the future, this new service, besides being able to developing new navigation tour routes, can also increase coverage of more locations, letting travelers enjoy more convenient, technologization travel services.

Through the adopting the resources of SMEA, SMEs can concert clusters' power to create and develop innovative products, services and operations models, and have garnered much success. In the future, we can expect to see even more SMEs involving in the cluster and improve the innovation capability. At the same time, with the acclaim of international awards, SMEs can be encouraged achieving globalization, and letting Taiwanese SMEs create the Blue Ocean in the globalization trends.

Contact person: Bi-Hong Chen
Telephone: +886-2-2366-2337
Cluster Service Hotline：Hui-Juan Chen, +886-2-6630-5833 ext. 100