History Established in 1992 by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the “Industrial Technology Advancement Awards” aims to drive industrial innovation and transformation by honoring select corporations and individuals with outstanding innovation achievements. In the past 14 years, up to 800 corporate participants took part in the Award, with 216 corporations awarded for their extraordinary technology advancements, as well as 15 individuals with breakthrough innovative developments. These winners all attained excellent performance and reputation. Many corporate leaders even see the award as a key performance indicator. Previous award events had not only won enthusiastic responses from the domestic industry, but also boosted R&D advancements in other trades through exchanges with the award winners.
Descriptions
The “Industrial Technology Advancement Awards” includes two categories: “Enterprise Awards” (Distinguished Innovation Accomplishment Award, Outstanding Enterprise Innovation Award ,and Excellent Enterprise Innovation Award) and “Individual Achievement Awards” (Innovator Award for Advanced Technology, for R&D Management, and for Outstanding Young). The nomination criteria are based on how a company sees the whole picture of organization values, including effectiveness of the five aspects of the innovation: technology/know-how, product/system, workflow/process, organization, and strategy. The review process consists of three stages: Preliminary Review (Written Form), Second Review (Company Visit/Interview), and Final Review (Board Review).
Prospects
Recent international competition is fierce; industrial R&D has long been taken as the main effort for industrial upgrading. Taiwan has also shown an eye catching performance in industrial R&D. Facing the trend of globalization, free trading, and changes in the industrial structure, Taiwan economy is also transforming towards the “innovation-driven” mode of “Added-values” by further use of the R&D energy. As Dr. W. Chan Kim pointed out in his book “Blue Ocean Strategy”, “value innovation” is the essence for corporations to open up a profitable blue ocean. Taiwan domestic industries should create unique benefits for their customers and integrate values and innovation through technology. In this way, they can further use current advantages in the country to find a cut-in point in the immense global market, as well as to develop added-value and cost-lowering benefits to make Taiwan one of key players in the industrial value chain in the trend of globalization. On the other hand, in light of the intense international competition, only by making Taiwan the Industrial R&D Center step by step, focusing on the fundamentals, enhancing technology strength, establishing Taiwan as an integrator of globalization and resources, and implementing “deep plowing Taiwan” can we engage layout for globalization and face challenges of competition from other parts of the world.
With this in mind,Department of Industrial Technology, (DOIT) has set the theme of the “2006 Industrial Technology Advancement Awards” as “Deep Plow in Taiwan, and Added-value Innovation”, in the expectation that domestic industry can pursue excellent innovation while working on the fundamentals of R&D to enhance their roots in Taiwan. Only by building up the domestic industrial value chain and focusing on innovative R&D “intensively” and “extensively” can we make agile utilization of technology strategies, so as to strengthen Taiwan’s competitive capability. We expect the domestic industry to think ahead to realize the prospect of “Think Globally, Act Locally” for enterprises to continue enhance capabilities for “innovative values”, so as to face the challenges of the coming years.
2006.03.30
