Lee Jae-hong, TIPA Director, "Will Strengthen the Innovation Growth Ecosystem for SMEs and Ventures"

Lee Jae-hong, President of the Small and Medium Business Technology Information Promotion Agency. / Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Jong-hwa] The Korea Technology and Information Promotion Agency for SMEs (TIPA) has decided to strengthen its response to future climate change and environmental crises by focusing support on carbon reduction equipment investments for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) urgently needing low-carbon process transitions.

On the 16th, Lee Jae-hong, President of TIPA, held a press conference marking the 20th anniversary of its launch at the Seoul Yeouido Metropolitan Area Business Support Office, stating, "Starting this year, we plan to further strengthen support for the development of new technologies to promote carbon neutrality, such as developing carbon-neutral leading models and net-zero technology innovation."

This year, TIPA will newly support ▲Net-zero technology innovation development projects and ▲carbon-neutral leading model technology development projects to respond to the climate crisis and foster promising future green companies. To realize a Smart Korea and provide project-based support, it will also support ▲health functional food development, ▲technology development utilizing living labs, and ▲technology development for smart traditional market shopping districts. To promote technology development using regional infrastructure and support manufacturing innovation, TIPA plans to support ▲performance-sharing common technology development, ▲industry-academia-research platform cooperative technology development, and ▲smart manufacturing innovation technology development projects.

In particular, starting this year, TIPA will take full charge of planning, evaluating, and managing regional industry R&D functions such as regional specialized industry promotion, industrial complex redevelopment area enterprise support, and crisis response regional enterprise support to foster regional innovation and SMEs.

President Lee emphasized, "The Fourth Industrial Revolution is accelerating further due to COVID-19. The importance of 'fast fish' (companies that read the flow of change and respond quickly) has grown more than the past 'big fish' (large enterprises)." He added, "This year, we will focus our efforts on actively discovering promising SMEs and ventures to secure future growth engines and strengthen support centered on an innovation ecosystem."

He continued, "As an institution celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, we have grown significantly in scale. Internally, we will enhance our systems, and externally, we will strengthen our network capabilities to become a reliable partner for SMEs and ventures, evolving into a mature institution both internally and externally."

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