President Chung Jae-hoon of the Korea Institute for the Advancement of Technology (KIAT) disclosed his determination to enhance the quality of its one-one-one, on-the-scene support to companies in an initiative to nurture 200 “Good Companies.”
The KIAT president unveiled The KIAT Strategies in four areas ? information, technology, manpower, and infrastructure ? during a meeting with reporters in Sejong City.
“Companies should enhance their competitive edge to create an ecosystem for the creative economy, and we intend to unearth companies which lead the creative economy and make them good jobs through the biz-partner system,” KIAT President Chung said.
Each KIAT staff member serves as a biz-partner to implement a one-on-one program to provide on-the-scene, in-depth, support to one company. The staff works as a guardian-cum-assistant to help a company gain easier and more convenient service to government support services.
KIAT staff members toured more than 100 sites to give a helping hand to SMEs during “Wow Day” ? Wonderful KIAT on Wednesday — on Wednesdays in 2014.
Recognizing the need for offering on-the-scene, in-depth support to SMEs, KIAT launched the one-on-one program.
KIAT has an annual budget of 1.4 trillion won to implement some 100 diverse state R&D tasks. The institute wants to provide comprehensive support services tailored to meet SMEs’ needs according to corporate growth stages ? start-up, growth, retrieval and rechallenging.
SMEs most frequently complain of difficulties in manpower, commercializing technology and business models, and exploring new markets (making inroads into foreign markets). The strategies call for the operation of the biz-partner system in information, technology, manpower and infrastructure that KIAT wants to focus on to yield tangible results.
Initially, KIAT plans to strengthen information on R&D activities of industrial technology with a potential of high availability by publishing statistical briefings on industrial technology. Information on the technologies listed on the National Tech-Bank website (www.ntb.kr) will be changed into a business-term one for companies’ understanding.
KIAT will launch projects to help companies put gifted manpower into their right places and successfully carry out the commercializing of projects, connecting markets. Among them are the Colla-Lab, a collaboration project calling for dispatching researchers from state-financed research institutions to SMEs, a project to support business ideas, a project to rediscover R&D, and a voucher system on technology commercialization.
An industrial manpower internship, in which collegians undergo on-the-job training before being hired, and collaboration between industry and academia circles are expected to ease mismatches, KIAT officials said.
Professional consulting areas which biz-partners cannot deal with will be left to a pool of professionals belonging to KIAT’s Global Technology Cooperation & Support Corps and Technology Commercialization Consultation Corps.
Besides, a regulation innovation center will be established and operated to cope with complaints and difficulties that SMEs find when commercializing their technologies. The center will form a network on collaboration with elements from the creative economy and innovation centers being established in 17 cities and provinces across the nation.
KIAT said it expects The KIAT Strategies to solidify its standing as a comprehensive service provider for companies.
KIAT, setting job creation as a major business management index, has achieved its 2014 in-house goal — creating some 20,000 jobs, up 25 percent compared to the original goal of 16,000 jobs. About 15,000 jobs were newly created through the nurturing of regional industries, 3,300 jobs came from supporting mid-size superstars, and the remaining 1,800 jobs were created through an on-the-job training manpower development project.
KIAT is still maintaining a focus on job creation this year, but it will not impose a burden on companies, given their hard economic conditions.
KIAT President Chung has so far declared management phrases such “on-the-scene communication” and “spirit of collaboration to create jobs for the creative economy.”
Chung said, “Now is a time to consider ways of materializing action plans to the extent companies sense changes as far as it comes to working attitudes of field and collaboration. We’ll devote ourselves to enhancing our standing as a comprehensive service provider to companies by established a well-knitted, precise corporate support service network.”
KIAT President’s New Year Message
KIAT’s president set the top three 2015 management tenets as: launching a 30-year economic growth through the realizing of the government’s three-year economic innovation plan; leading the establishment of an ecosystem for the realization of the creative economy; and KIAT committed to fulfilling social responsibility as a public entity.
To this end, he said KIAT has decided to work out ways of connecting collaboration projects it implements with related organizations with the Creative Economy and Innovation Centers.
KIAT will expand investments in core industrial areas to secure future growth engines while establishing a comprehensive system designed to support stages of commercialization, ranging from startup to growth and retrieval.
In particular, KIAT will unearth Leading Korea Companies that will lead the creative economy, and KIAT will back up the tentatively-named Leading Company Foundation, to be established by the business community on a voluntary basis in order to assist SMEs in the commercialization of business ideas and lend an ear to the voices of businesses, which will be reflected to work out policies tailored to meet businesses’ needs, he said.
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