University-Industry Research Collaboration in Taiwan

Taiwan is currently shifting from a labor-intensive to knowledge-intensive economy; however, the transformation process is still in eff ective. Although Taiwan has been placed on the top in the world in some product areas in terms of output, the added value and profi ts from the business operations remain low. One of the critical ways to improve the situation is to enhance the level of technological sophistication and to encourage research collaboration between industry and university which is thus regarded as one major approach to at this objective. Nevertheless, the issue and related practices are new to most of the policy makers and academic researchers in Taiwan. This study is to explore this issue through (1) an extensive literature review, and to discover (2) the need of university-industry research collaboration system, (3) the need of government to set up research centers for industrial technologies, and (4) the need of industrial corporations to build a long-term relationship with universities.