SMEA signs MOU to build a platform and speed up incubation cooperation
Taiwan Business Day to harness European market potential
Under the witness of more than 600 incubation center professionals and guests, the MOEA’s SMEA Director General Johnny YEH and the European Business & Innovation Centre Network (EBN) Chairman Philippe Vanrie had signed the Joint Incubation Cooperation MOU on June 27 in the 23rd EBN Annual Meeting, Lleida, Spain. This MOU aims to sustain mutual cooperation built from 2011, to strengthen incubation center cooperation through internationalization, and to bring together talent, capital markets, create more business opportunities between Taiwan and Europe and benefit for all.
EBN Chairman Philippe Vanrie stated that Taiwan is known for its innovative capability and flexibility, and, at the same time, serves as the Asia- Pacific commerce and traffic hub. Blooming developments of Taiwan’s commercial incubation, innovative events and its powerful economic strength cannot be ignored. With the signing of this MOU, we will be further dedicated to the mutual formation of the TW-EU networking platforms to support SMEs to harness European market potential, generate more business opportunities and, most important of all, to hasten close industrial cooperation between Taiwan and Europe on the basis of reciprocity.
Under the leadership of SMEA Director General YEH, a delegation from Taiwan consisting of Start-Up Taiwan Accelerator alliances, incubation center professionals and a number of SMEs, had attended the 23rd EBN Annual Meeting from June 25 to 27 in Lleida, Spain. This year’s Meeting theme “Empower Youth; Accelerate Entrepreneurship; Transform Lives” seeks to encourage the youth to establish innovative businesses, harness the resources of cross-border incubation, and to solve unemployment issues.
Director General YEH has been invited to be the Plenary Speaker in this EBN meeting and delivered a speech on “Strategic Thinking for Entrepreneurship” in the morning of June 27, sharing Taiwan’s experiences in strategic thinking and policy-making to empower entrepreneurship of next generation. Director General YEH pointed out the Taiwan unemployment rate has continued to show an upward tendency ever since 2009. In light of high unemployment rate issue, SMEA has promoted a series of youth entrepreneurship acceleration policies and youth entrepreneurship competitions. With the efforts of University incubation centers and the four Start-Up Taiwan Accelerator alliances: Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), Chung Yuan Christian University (CYCU) and Institute for Information Industry (III), we are able to assist SMEs and youth entrepreneurship to develop and prosper.
To enhance business opportunities and cooperation between Taiwan and Europe, we and TGN (Taiwan Globalization Network) jointly held “Taiwan Business Day (TBD)” on June 23, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. TGN and ITRI had intensively coached 10 selected Taiwanese companies to improve their internalization competitiveness in advance. Monthly evaluation had been done to improve the effectiveness of this Taiwan-Europe business matching event. SMEs from both sides were quiet satisfied with the outcome and effectiveness of TBD. ITRI, TGN and Business Angel Europe (BAE) had signed a MOU on TBD this year to establish connections and generate more business opportunities under the witness of SMEA.
The Joint Incubation Cooperation MOU between SMEA and EBN and ITRI-TGN-BAE partnership aim to build a TW-EU co-incubation and business matching mechanism. With the mechanism establishment, it will inspire new thinking, create new opportunities and develop new technologies for SMEs and start-ups, assisting them to born global and go global.