Seoul City promotes cooperation between startups and enterprises

The Seoul Metropolitan Government will discover about 2,000 technology startups by 2024 and match more than half of them with large and medium-sized enterprises.

The city government said on Tuesday that it will promote “open innovation,” a management method that utilizes the external resources of other large and medium-sized enterprises for corporate innovation.

Through the innovation process, large and medium-sized enterprises can form partnerships with startups with high growth potential, and startups can seize growth opportunities through cooperation with large and small-sized enterprises.

Since 2019, Seoul City has supported open innovation between 42 large and medium-sized companies and 213 startups, focusing on startup facilities, such as the Seoul Startup Hub. It resulted in 100 cases of technical cooperation and 9.1 billion won of direct investment from large enterprises.

More specifically, the city plans to implement three strategies such as expanding the open innovation market by increasing the participation of large and medium-sized companies, maximizing business performance by expanding opportunities for convergence between industries, including robotics, fintech, and artificial intelligence, and expanding overseas growth centers.

Firstly, the city government plans to increase the number of participating companies to more than 200 by 2024 by organizing the “Seoul Open Innovation” forum with large and medium-sized companies this year. In addition, the city will strengthen technical cooperation with large and medium-sized companies in new growth industry clusters, including Hyundai Motor in Yangjae (AI, robot) and Shinhan Finance Group in Yeouido (fintech), and support inter-cluster cooperation to promote convergence between industries.

Also, the Seoul city government pledged to help startups advance into the global market by expanding the number of overseas growth centers by more than 10, including the ones in Silicon Valley and Europe. The city government is currently running the “Seoul Startup Hub” in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.


clearlee@donga.com