Ministry of SMEs and Startups, Recruiting Participants for 'TechBridge Utilization Commercialization Technology Development Project' in the First Half of the Year

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on the 29th that it is recruiting participating companies for the "2023 First Half Tech-Bridge Utilization Commercialization Technology Development Project" to strengthen the technological competitiveness and technology commercialization capabilities of domestic small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the 소재·부품·장비 (SoBuJang: materials, parts, and equipment) sector.

This project is a representative commercialization research and development (R&D) initiative in the SoBuJang field that supports SMEs, which find it difficult to develop independent technologies, by transferring core technologies held by universities and research institutions for commercialization. The budget for next year’s project is set at 29.364 billion KRW. The plan is to select 20 tasks each in the first and second halves of the year to carry out the project.

For the first half of next year, 20 tasks will be selected from 219 public offering tasks (RFPs) confirmed through reviews by industry-academia-research experts among those discovered through technology demand surveys. To enable SMEs to secure future technological superiority and proactively respond to changes in the global value chain, future-leading items have also been added to the discovery targets. The five future-leading items are ultra-fine micro LED material parts, meta-lens materials for 3D augmented reality (AR), next-generation all-solid-state battery materials, heterogeneous direct heat dissipation materials, and alternative meat raw materials.

Selected companies will receive technology development funding as well as additional support such as intellectual property (IP) acquisition guarantees and commercialization guarantees operated by the Korea Technology Finance Corporation to reduce the burden of technology transfer costs and increase the success rate of commercialization.

Furthermore, to ensure the smooth localization of core SoBuJang technologies and to help the 40 companies selected for the Tech-Bridge Utilization Commercialization Technology Development Project achieve technological innovation and commercialization results, a performance dissemination program operated by a specialized institution (the Korea Technology and Information Promotion Agency for SMEs) will be actively utilized to provide support.

In the commercialization technology development process for SMEs, universities and research institutes that transfer technology must participate to pass on the transferred technology know-how and to expedite technology development.

Applications for the project can be submitted from January 16 to 30 next year, and detailed information can be found on the Pan-Government Integrated Research Support System website.

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