The Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises and Startups announced on the 26th that it held a signing ceremony for a business agreement between corporations and institutions participating in the '2025 Public-Private Cooperation Open Innovation Support Program.'
The Public-Private Cooperation Open Innovation Support Program is a project that discovers and connects collaboration needs between large corporations and startups. It was initiated with the aim of supporting collaborative funding from the government to activate open innovation centered around startups.
This agreement involves 65 demand corporations for open innovation and 85 collaborating startups. Demand corporations, including large and mid-sized corporations and public institutions, aim to foster collaboration with startups through resource and infrastructure provision and corporate venture capital (CVC) investments to achieve performance through collaboration projects.
EcoPro, which is participating in the agreement, is pushing for the efficiency of manufacturing processes for secondary battery materials in collaboration with the startup Amber Road, which provides manufacturing artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. LG Uplus is collaborating with the startup Wish, which develops AI-based content planning, production, and editing solutions, for a scenario summarization and review demonstration using AI.
This year, the 'Mid-sized Corporations-Startups Open Innovation Challenge' will also be conducted for the first time. Mid-sized corporation Korea Eju AI plans to collaborate with the AI dementia diagnostic startup NeuroXty for verification of early Alzheimer's disease screening and prevention and management solutions through this support program.
Eighty-five projects will receive incentives such as rewards for excellent performance projects through a consolidated competition at the end of this year.
An open innovation policy communication forum will also be held. In this forum, major large and mid-sized corporations, public institutions, and startups will participate to share each corporation's trends in promoting open innovation and engage in active discussions on ways to revitalize the domestic open innovation ecosystem.
Lee Jae-hoon, CEO of EcoPro Partners, noted, "The important aspect of open innovation is mutual benefit between collaborating corporations," and added, "As a CVC, understanding the demands of both the business sector and startups and mediating collaboration has resulted in a positive perception of open innovation within the EcoPro group, leading to collaboration with over 20 startups just this year."
Vice Minister Noh Yong-seok said, "Considering the nature of open innovation that requires long-term collaboration, we will establish an effective support system based on performance at each collaboration stage such as matching, technology verification, and market verification."