‘Taiwanese are venture-minded’

Sam Shen, right, head of the market intelligence and consulting division of Taiwan’s state-run think tank Institute for Information Industry, speaks during an interview with five international media outlets, including The Korea Times, Friday in Taipei. Next to him is Chuen-huei Hung, deputy director of the division. / Korea Times

Taipei’s IT success comes down to enterpreneurs

TAIPEI— College graduates here, especially engineers, work for several years in the information technology sector after graduation and then leave without hesitation to start their own businesses.

This, along with the government’s supportive role, has paved the way for Taiwan’s current strong standing in information technology, an expert from a Taipei-based state-run think tank said Friday during an interview with five international media outlets, including The Korea Times.

Journalists from Spain, Germany and Japan also attended the interview.

“In the past 10 years, a particular focus of engineering education in colleges has been placed on innovation,” Shen said. “Taiwanese want to be bosses. They don’t want to spend their entire career working for someone else as employees.”

Shen said engineers’ strong networks with counterparts in California’s Silicon Valley, as well as the United States government, also played a role in boosting the local information technology industry.

“Over the past three or four decades, nearly 8,000 to 10,000 Taiwanese students annually went to U.S. universities to study. Some of them got information sector jobs there after graduation, and returned to Taiwan after years of professional experience with big U.S. companies,” he said. “They have networks with U.S. engineers, as well as U.S. government officials, and this has helped Taiwanese engineers expand their information technology-related partnerships with U.S. companies.”

The former venture capitalist said he believed Taiwanese engineers are probably the third most creative nationals, following Silicon Valley engineers and Israeli venture capitalists.

Shen said the timing of the Taiwanese government’s intervention in the information technology sector to help venture companies and its role over the past 30 years has created a business-friendly startup atmosphere.

Now, he said, China is following the path that Taiwan has taken to boost its information technology sector.

Korea and Taiwan share a similarity in that the two economies are heavily reliant on trade for economic growth. But their engines for growth are different.

Conglomerates dominate economic activities in Korea, whereas venture businesses and small- and medium-sized firms have formed the backbone of the Taiwanese economy.

The majority of Taiwan’s global brands, such as computer hardware and electronics producer ASUS and multimedia software solutions provider Cyberlink, were established in the late 1980s or in the 1990s respectively.

In Korea, industry experts said, only one out of 1,000 venture businesses tend to survive.

Some industry experts said Taiwan managed to escape from the devastating Asian Financial Crisis which battered several economies in the region in the late 1990s because of Taiwan’s pro-startup business environment.

Korea is currently seeing heated debate over economic justice in the political circle as there is only a month left until the presidential election.

The three major presidential candidates have vowed to create a business environment to benefit small- and medium-sized firms.

Candidates have unveiled measures to make it easier for startups to borrow funds to finance their operations and research and development.

They have called for healthy partnerships between conglomerates and their partner firms, usually small- or medium-sized companies. <The Korea Times/Kang Hyun-kyung>