Establishing Urban Industrial Parks to Drive Regional Innovation System

Abstract

Over the past five decades, a total of more than 150 industrial parks have been developed in Taiwan by the central government, local governments and the private sector. There has often been intense competition between individual industrial parks, because of unclear positioning or lack of clarity in the park’s development strategy. This rivalry has had a negative impact on the level of synergy that industrial parks have been able to create, and has also militated against the formation of strong industry clusters. In the past, the formulation of industrial development strategy and the making available of land for industry were the responsibilities of different government agencies; the resulting lack of coordinated planning has become a major obstacle that hinders successful industry cluster development and the transformation of Taiwanese industry towards a new focus on high value-added. Besides allocating more funding to ensure coordinated planning of land use and industrial development, the government also needs to rethink the positioning of Taiwan’s industry clusters and ensure that the platforms and incentives needed to support innovation are in place. The government should be seeking to help business enterprises adopt automation technology and integrated energy source utilization, while promoting the development of specialized industry clusters and encouraging individual regions within Taiwan to build industries with a distinctive regional character.