Nationwide Top Grade ... Daegu City, Linked Development Project for Relocated Public Institutions

Operation of 'Daegu Innovation City Open Lab'

Advanced Information and Communication Convergence Industry Technology Institute.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Dongguk Lee] Daegu City announced that the Relocation Public Institution Linked Development Project, which is being promoted to foster the convergence medical industry, a regional specialized industry, received a ‘Very Excellent’ grade in last year’s evaluation.

The Relocation Public Institution Linked Development Project is a project that contributes to strengthening the competitiveness of local industries by creating an industry-academia-research innovation ecosystem based on the functions of public institutions that have completed relocation to regional innovation cities. Fourteen cities and provinces nationwide participate, and Daegu City has been operating the ‘Daegu Innovation City Open Lab’ since 2018 to support the innovative growth of the medical industry, a regional specialized industry.

Despite the restrictions on economic activities and the difficulty of face-to-face interactions due to COVID-19 last year, the establishment of a non-face-to-face corporate support system and the provision of support services helped prevent the contraction of research and development and commercialization activities of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Daegu City provided online and offline support services to 112 local SMEs in the medical industry, including 8 cases of big data and development platform utilization support, 743 cases of information provision, 24 cases of technical consultation, 89 cases of prototype production, 23 cases of marketing support, and 7 cases of innovative product development.

Through this, excellent results were achieved, including net sales of 28 billion KRW (related sales of 83.1 billion KRW), net employment of 114 people (related employment of 226 people), investment attraction of about 3.7 billion KRW, and 16 patents.

This is a remarkable achievement corresponding to 47.3% of the net sales of 59.1 billion KRW and 29.2% of the net employment of 390 people achieved by the 14 cities and provinces nationwide through the same project in 2020.

As a result, Daegu City received the highest grade, ‘Very Excellent,’ in the differentiated evaluation of this Relocation Public Institution Linked Development Project and simultaneously secured an additional 100 million KRW in national funds for 2022.

Kim Hyun-deok, director of the Advanced Information and Communication Convergence Industry Technology Institute, the supervising institution and project manager, said, “The active cooperation of relocated public institutions and joint research and development institutions in the Daegu area and their dedication to the region seem to be the secret to the good evaluation.”

Daegu Mayor Kwon Young-jin said, “The achievements shown by the Daegu Innovation City Open Lab demonstrate the strength of Daegu City’s industrial promotion policy that works even in crisis situations,” and added, “We will build a robust industrial structure so that the local economy does not falter under any circumstances, including COVID-19.”

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