The Ministry of SMEs and Startups said on the 1st that it held a kickoff roundtable for the "2026 technopark equipment utilization-based innovation growth cooperation support project."
The project links research equipment owned by technoparks with universities' professional personnel and technological capabilities to diagnose technological problems at regional small and midsize businesses and support them through commercialization. It will carry out equipment utilization, technology verification, and research and development (R&D) project planning.
Until now, regional small and midsize businesses have struggled to secure the specialized equipment and technical support needed to improve products or push new businesses. It was also difficult to connect the results of tests and analyses using equipment to actual technology development.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS) will use this project to build a cooperation system between technoparks and universities and move to provide customized support centered on corporations' technology needs. Based on joint use of research equipment and expert technical advice, it will support technology verification and back corporations' technology commercialization by consolidating subsequent commercialization R&D project discovery and preliminary research.
This year, two consortia will run the project: Chungnam Technopark–Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and Jeonbuk Technopark–Jeonju University. Starting in July, the institutions plan to support more than 30 regional small and midsize businesses with prototype production, process improvement, performance evaluation, testing and certification, and technology consulting.
At the kickoff roundtable, operating institutions shared plans to push the project in the second half and introduced the support programs. The corporations in attendance conveyed difficulties they face during technology development and offered opinions on project operations and support direction.
Hwang Young-ho, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS) director-general for technology innovation policy, said, "A cooperation partner that can solve corporations' technology difficulties and jointly push commercialization is more important than anything for the innovation and growth of regional small and midsize businesses," adding, "We will analyze the results of this project and reflect them in the 'K-ILP' industry-academia-research cooperation program being planned as a national agenda project."