Support for technology commercialization to consolidation public research results into innovative startups is getting underway in earnest. Support is expected across the entire cycle for prospective founders and startups based on public technology, from technology advancement to attracting investment.
CNTTech, the lead research and development organization for the technology management promotion (company builder) program, will oversee commercialization and handle private investment attraction and operation of startup incubation programs. Dankook University Technology Holdings and the Chungnam Institute for Industry-Academia Convergence, as joint research and development organizations, will support public technology infrastructure and matching of research personnel, as well as technology advancement.
Eligible recipients are prospective founders and startups preparing to launch by using public technology or university-owned technology, or corporations seeking to advance their existing business models by integrating such technology.
The program is characterized by supporting the entire process from technology advancement to attracting investment. First, it matches public technologies held by universities and related institutions with corporations and supports technology valuation and business model (BM) advancement. It then offers a tailored accelerating program necessary for startup growth, including education, marketing, global expansion strategies, patent strategy development, open innovation, and networking.
Investment support will be provided as well. CNTTech will make direct investments using its own investment account and managed funds, and plans to support linkage with the Ministry of SMEs and Startups' technology startup support (TIPS), hold demo days, and assist with follow-on fundraising.
A differentiating factor of this initiative is that it is an industry-academia-research collaboration model that combines private investment capabilities with public research infrastructure. CNTTech will oversee commercialization, investment, and startup incubation, while Dankook University Technology Holdings and the Chungnam Institute for Industry-Academia Convergence will support public technology discovery, research personnel linkage, and technology advancement to raise the likelihood of successful technology commercialization.
In particular, CNTTech plans to execute more than 1.5 billion won in direct investments through this initiative and to support the growth of promising technology corporations by expanding links to research and development (R&D) funds, including TIPS, and private investment.
Recruitment of participating corporations for the "TechBridge Batch" program has been completed, and it is set to begin full-scale operation of the startup incubation program. Alongside this, it will conduct rolling technology matching for startups in need of technology and technology-supplying institutions, and will continue to run meetups and commercialization programs.
CNTTech aims to expand successful cases of public technology commercialization through this initiative and to establish an industry-academia-research startup incubation model that combines public technology with private capital. It also plans to build a startup ecosystem that minimizes the "death valley (commercialization gap period)" that technology-startup corporations face in the commercialization process by linking private investment with research and development (R&D) support.