The Small and Medium Enterprise Administration (SMEA) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs began implementing its incubation policy in 1997. Fruitful results have been yielded since then. Over the years, 149 incubators received subsidies from the SMEA, and over 18,377 SMEs were incubated, maintaining and increasing employment opportunities by over 340,000. This led to investments and capital increase by over NT$153 billion, and assisted 124 enterprises in successfully going public (OTC).
Observing the experience of other countries, support for startups is not limited to a single aspect, and rather forms an incubation industry through numerous support activities. The integration of resources in various industries link together industries to accelerate cross-disciplinary innovation and form an ecosystem with a virtuous cycle. This is carried out in coordination with the transformation of domestic incubators to create an incubation industry, so as to create an ideal environment for innovation and startups in Taiwan. The incubators have thus become the pillar and leader of Taiwan's incubation industry. The SMEA began assisting incubators with this transformation in 2018; instead of simply providing resources, the incubators become a sharing and support organization for SMEs. The SMEA will strengthen its collaboration with private accelerators and fundraising platforms under the plan to develop the incubation industry, so as to help startups quickly enter the market. The goal is to create an incubation ecosystem that fully integrates the capabilities of each industry on the basis of innovation and startups. The SMEA has formulated a series of guidance measures, such as promoting incubation service features; dividing incubators into International Startup Accelerator(ISA) including Feature International Startup Accelerator(FISA), Technical Entrepreneurship Amplifier(TEA), and Local Enterprise Innovation(LEI); guiding incubators to focus on specific fields based on their own capabilities, so that they become featured, professional, and international. The SMEA hopes to thereby create an excellent incubation ecosystem based on innovation and startups, and utilize collective resources to develop an innovative Taiwan.
