'Seoul Innovation Challenge' to Seek New Industry Innovative Technologies in the Second Half... Customized Support for Technology Development and Intellectual Property Rights

198 Teams Flood 1st and 2nd Recruitment... Technology Advancement and Team Restructuring Through Idea Sharing and Team Building

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced on the 6th that it has begun recruiting participants for the second half of the ‘6th Seoul Innovation Challenge,’ an open technology development (R&D) competition that discovers startups possessing innovative new industry technologies. In the second half, there will be an open call for core technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution such as artificial intelligence (machine learning), autonomous driving, and metaverse, along with recruiting large corporations collaborating startups in the aerospace and ESG sectors.

Participants in the ‘Seoul Innovation Challenge’ enhance their technologies through idea exchange and collaboration among participants via idea generation and team building. Teams that pass the preliminary evaluation receive mentoring from experts and proceed to prototype production. The 14 teams selected in the final evaluation (7 teams from rounds 1 and 2, and 7 teams from rounds 3 and 4) will receive up to 150 million KRW in technology development (R&D) funding, along with one-on-one customized mentoring on regulations, intellectual property rights, and marketing, as well as continuous growth management through linkage with startup support programs from technology sponsors.

Additionally, starting this year, the ‘Seoul Innovation Challenge’ will also recruit innovative technologies in cooperation with large corporations. Large corporations will present challenges based on the innovative technologies they seek, and innovative companies with relevant technologies or ideas will be matched with these corporations. Six teams will be selected to participate in the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) together with large corporations in the aerospace and ESG technology sectors.

Domestic and international SMEs, startups, universities, and prospective entrepreneurs wishing to participate in the Seoul Innovation Challenge can apply online through the SBA website’s notice board. The third round of applications for the Seoul Innovation Challenge will be open until August 5, and the fourth round will run from August 8 to September 23. The large corporation cooperation open call will be announced separately on the 18th.

Jung Young-jun, Director of the Economic Policy Division of Seoul City, said, “We will continuously support companies with innovative technologies and ideas to grow through systematic customized support from the initial business planning stage to market entry via the Seoul Innovation Challenge.” He added, “By diversifying collaboration touchpoints between startups and global large corporations, startups will seize opportunities for overseas market entry through stable growth, and large corporations will establish a system to discover innovative technologies in new industries.”

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