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Taiwanese government has issued the Technology Basic Law in December 1988 and later on approved the Government Technology Research Development Intellectual Properties Ownership and Application Law in 2000. These two laws set the rule for intellectual properties derived from government research grants belonging to the research institutes. Also, these two laws promote the cooperation between academia and industries. It is an important task for universities to transform from traditionally being an education unit to being a new knowledge development base in order to meet the social needs. Taipei Medical University (TMU), as a biotechnology medical professional university, has devoted to promote academia-industry cooperation with diversities and flexibilities since 2003. Promotion of academia-industry cooperation has been one of the most important development strategies in TMU in the past 10 years. There are three phases during the process, including “budding phase”, “growing phase”, and “deep plowing phase”. Budding phase, 2003-2006, new laws and organization framework were established. Growing phase, 2007-2010, an academia-industry cooperation friendly campus was developed. Deep plowing phase, after 2011, new industrial research focuses have been created to promote TMU as the first class platform for biotechnology medical professional academia-industry cooperation. The purpose of this study is to use TMU as an exemplar to analyze the key success factor for developing a successful academia-industry cooperation model. This exemplar will serve as a good model for other universities to develop academia-industry cooperation in the future. We have chosen four cases of academia-industry cooperation to analyze the successful model in this study, including the industries of medical device, health food, and cell therapy, which are all the featuring focus of TMU research. Four academia-industry cooperation models have been involved in this study, including technology transfer, incubator, industry sponsored research, and spin-off companies. These four cases of academia-industry cooperation in this study all are the multi-dimentional combination cooperation model. We also have shown that the model of Horn-Chun Biotechnology Company is most successful among the four cases. Based on TMU industry cooperation policy, organization and operation, and research energy, we found that the key success factor of academia-industry cooperation model in TMU include: core value delivered by the TMU leader, providing incentives for faculty members, encouraging faculty to get involved in the spin-off companies, personal traits of faculty members, novelty of technology, good interaction between faculty and industry, flexible salary system for managers, and continuous support into academia-industry cooperation. In this study, we also found that the promotion of academia-industry cooperation still has to be improved in TMU. We suggest that TMU should build a more experienced and professional manager team, develop new technologies to meet industry needs, strengthen the rewarding system, establish research gap funds, and set up funds for new spin-off companies in the future. We believe from the above suggestions, TMU will likely become a first class academia-industry cooperation platform in Taiwan to translate the research findings into new technology and product, to meet the market needs, and to promote the national competiveness.
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