Gwangju Creative Economy Innovation Center, Startup Global Scale-up Support MOU

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Jin-hyung] Gwangju Center for Creative Economy and Innovation (Center Director Ha Sang-yong, hereinafter Gwangju Innovation Center) announced on the 3rd that it signed a business agreement with the Korea International Trade Association Gwangju-Jeonnam Regional Headquarters to support the global expansion of local startups and revitalize investment attraction projects.

Through this agreement, both organizations plan to support the entire startup lifecycle from discovery to nurturing, fostering, and investment by discovering globally growth-oriented startups, and matching open innovation with domestic and international large and medium-sized enterprises and public institutions. To this end, the Gwangju Innovation Center will share its resources and actively utilize the Trade Association’s platform and overseas networks.

In particular, the Gwangju Innovation Center plans to build a continuous collaborative relationship linked with the Trade Association by sharing information on NextRise 2021, the largest domestic global innovation growth fair, the NanumTech X Startup project results that create synergy between local medium-sized enterprises and startups, and the recently held Bold Investment Attraction IR program.

Recently, the Gwangju Innovation Center has been focusing on various open innovation projects with large and medium-sized enterprises in various fields to help local startups develop sales channels and attract investment.

To support sales channels in the automotive aftermarket sector, through collaboration with Auto&Co., it is supporting product registration recommendations and marketing on large enterprises’ and automotive distribution platforms. For the first time in the Gwangju area, it is co-hosting the AI Test-Bed Korea competition with KT CS Co., Ltd. as an open innovation in the artificial intelligence field, supporting the discovery of excellent AI items and sales channel development.

Going forward, the open innovation projects will be expanded to public institutions and local governments so that local startups with low recognition can share the brand power of public institutions or local governments, laying the foundation for overseas global expansion and promoting export expansion by establishing a cooperative network.

In this way, the Gwangju Innovation Center is not only discovering and nurturing startups but also developing programs to provide various channels for local startups to promote excellent products by understanding the characteristics of each business through diverse open innovation.

Center Director Ha Sang-yong stated, “Through this agreement with the Korea International Trade Association, we will play a gateway role for expanding the center’s open innovation and for startups’ global expansion and investment.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.