To promote the innovation economy, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) has been devoted to supporting young students in starting tech businesses and providing comprehensive entrepreneurship training. One of its endeavors is the crossover between two flagship programs, From IP to IPO (FITI) program and the Civil IoT Taiwan (CIOT), implemented by the Science & Technology Policy Research and Information Center (STPI) of National Applied Research Labs (NARLabs). The first round of the 2022 FITI x CIOT Final Competition and Award Ceremony was held this afternoon on June 24 at the Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA), where the FITI Outstanding Entrepreneurship Award was granted to three teams: 台灣強骨, JMEM Technology, and 智在嘉鄉，投筆從農, while the CIOT Outstanding Entrepreneurship Award went to 布拉特斯布曼. All four teams were awarded a NT$1 million startup fund from sponsoring companies. These awards not only serve as a recognition of the entrepreneurial teams’ advanced technologies but also provide them with a solid entry into the marketplace.

Entering its tenth year, FITI has continued to discover and cultivate young entrepreneurs with great potential in the fields of cutting-edge technologies, providing them a stage to showcase Taiwan’s innovations. The program also forges a network of professional mentors across various fields, where experts from science parks and industry advisors from home and abroad are assembled to guide the teams through topics such as patent portfolios, fundraising pitches, precise business model development, and in-depth business training. Apart from that, FITI regularly organizes public matchmaking to connect the teams with venture capitals and angel investors from home and abroad, which presented itself to be the best facilitator for talents to venture into entrepreneurship. Starting this year, FITI has joined hands with CIOT for a special crossover project. As a part of the project, potential entrepreneurial teams are cultivated to develop applications using CIOT’s data to promote technology entrepreneurship. This would spur innovation and entrepreneurship in the data industry, improve the social impact of data economics, and create social values.

The academic research teams of this round demonstrated excellent innovative research and development capabilities and engaged in various R&D activities with great enthusiasm, determined to solve the market’s pain points with scientific technologies while boldly stepping into entrepreneurship. The first round of FITI x CIOT had selected 48 excellent academic research teams. After six months of business model adjustment, in-depth training, and two rounds of team evaluations, ten startup teams with the greatest observable potential were selected for the final competition. The judges evaluated the teams based on their market trends, the level of technologies involved, and their entrepreneurial determination, and finally narrowed the teams down to four finalists to receive the Outstanding Entrepreneurship Award.

MOST has long been devoted to promoting the development of Taiwan’s tech startup industry. The FITI was established with that goal in mind, with the aim of equipping young entrepreneurs by providing comprehensive entrepreneurship training and facilitating the development of new technologies and products. The program also supports academic research teams developing innovative technologies, encouraging practical application and academic innovation. Since the program took off in 2013, it has trained 760 startup teams and 3,742 young entrepreneurs and helped establish 342 companies. It has also attracted private investment of more than NT$ 5.53 billion in startup funding, effectively creating a virtuous circle of industrial innovation in Taiwan, laying the foundation for industrial digital transformation in Taiwan, and boosting the domestic market. MOST encouraged the teams to develop scalable technologies for global deployment at the beginning of their businesses, address global issues by leveraging forward-looking science, technologies, and cross-domain resources, and lead sustainable growth in the global environment with a positive mindset.