創新發現誌

The Secret to White Wood House’s Success – Maintaining High Standards and Creating Value through Quality  

By Hu Hsiu-Chu 

The third “stop” in the first stage of the “Happy Bus GO” project (which is being implemented by the Ministry of Economic Affairs with the aim of stimulating domestic demand) is the White Wood House Culture Gallery. Minister of Economic Affairs Yin Chi-Ming pointed out that many people don’t fully understand what the revitalization of old industrial districts should involve. “This (White Wood House) is just the sort of thing I am looking for.” The Minister stressed that we should be moving away from industries that create air pollution and noise pollution; instead, we should be working to develop tourist destinations that are imbued with culture and refinement. It has taken 10 years, but this is exactly what Stella Chien has achieved.  

To enhance the aesthetic quality of her company’s products, White Wood House Chairperson Stella Chien made six visits to Japan to learn from the Japanese. Impressed by her dedication, Ota Hideki (who won the Japanese national cake and sugar art awards two years running) agreed to serve as an artistic consultant for White Wood House. 

White Wood House produces 30,000 cakes a day. To ensure that the highest quality standards are maintained, any cakes that remain unsold after three days are thrown away. White Wood House refuses to use preservatives in its products; the company uses trehalose sugar, which is less sweet than ordinary sugar, but costs four times as much, and uses organic eggs, although this costs NT$20 million a year more than it would to use ordinary eggs.  

Reflecting her commitment to high quality and brand development, Stella Chien has established the beautiful White Wood House Culture Gallery. As she sees it, if your brand is just like every other company’s brand, then there is no point in your being in business.  
 

Chung Wei-Wen believes that, when it comes to innovation, you should start by thinking about 100 different types of conversation that people might have 

Interview by Lilian Kim; edited by Hsu Lih-Jia 

Ideas interviewed Dr. Chung Wei-Wen, Chairman of the Chinese Communication Society (who also holds the position of Dean of the College of Communication, National Cheng Chi University), to ask him about his vision of the future.

    Dr. Chung pointed out that, although the third-generation iPhone provides several hundred new functions and supports over a thousand new applications, Apple fans’ enthusiasm for this product continues to center around the same handful of widely-used functions. What does this signify?

    Dr. Chung believes that, rather than trying to forecast the future of mobile phone handsets from a technical standpoint, we would do better to imagine 100 different types of conversation that people might have. Developing the rich imagination needed to visualize the future requires negotiation, communication and observation at the level of daily life. If there was no negotiation in our lives, then there would be no need for conferencing software; if people did not have a tendency towards being narcissistic, social networking sites would not have grown so rapidly. In the future, humanistic and social training will play an increasingly important role in helping us to cope with new challenges, and cultural and humanistic factors will also play a very important role in R&D in the future.  
 

National Taiwan University of Science and Technology Explodes onto the Global Scene with Outstanding Design Capabilities 

By Chen Mu-Hua 

Germany’s annual iF Design Awards provide a showcase for innovative new products from all over the world. This year, two entries by three students from Taiwan’s National Taiwan University of Science and Technology won awards at iF. 

The inspiration for the “Eat Clean” eating utensils – which were designed jointly by Yeh Ming-Hong and Lai Chung-Ping (both first-year students at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology’s Graduate School of Design) – came when Yeh started wondering if there was any way of avoiding having to put eating utensils down on dirty restaurant tables when eating out, other than putting a tissue under them.  

Yeh’s goal was to develop eating utensils that would not touch the surface of the table regardless of which way up they were placed on it. One day, he solved the problem by accident when he put a one-dollar coin on top of a cardboard model. The coin created a “see-saw” effect in the cardboard; Yeh saw that, by getting the center of gravity in the right position, it would be possible to keep the parts of the cutlery that go into the mouth off the surface of the table.  

If the inspiration for Eat Clean came from a coin, then the inspiration for Liu Hsiang-Ling’s “Sticker Phone” came from a silicone suction lid. When Liu Hsiang-Ling was driving her car, she often found that, when she turned a corner, her mobile phone got flung about inside the car. She started to wonder if there was any way of getting it to stay in place, such as sticking it onto the car window.  

Seeing a silicon suction lid gave her the idea of trying silicone. Experimentation showed that, if the composition of the silicone was adjusted properly, not only was natural silicone sufficiently sticky to do the job, it could also be disposed of by burning it to a powder without causing pollution, in line with the “environmental protection” theme set by Gigabyte for the design awards.  

Starting out with the simple idea of creating a mobile phone that could be stuck in place, Liu Hsiang-Ling was able to develop an adhesive mobile phone handset that is also environmentally friendly. Her design makes extensive use of new technologies, including not only natural silicone but also solar panels and e-paper.  
 
 
 
 

Four Key Trends in ICT in Taiwan 

By Hu Hsiu-Chu 

The Institute for Information Industry’s Innovative DigiTech-enabled Applications & Services Institute has identified four key trends that will affect the development of the information and communications technology (ICT) sector in the period following the global financial crisis: increased emphasis on openness and interaction; extensive business opportunities in low-cost online and mobile services; making energy saving and carbon reduction an integral part of corporate DNA; revival of traditional industries.  

Business models that emphasize openness and interaction

“The new software download business model emphasizes openness and interaction,” explains Wang Jung-Tsung, Vice President for Product Planning at ASUS (which has succeeded in selling several million of its Eee PCs worldwide). Wang notes that, in the Web 2.0 era, interactivity is the key to securing new business opportunities, and that there will be a trend towards the formation of software downloading communities based around different brands.  

In the English language teaching market, which is worth around NT$15 billion a year in Taiwan, teaching is no longer a one-directional process. Angelin Chen, Vice President of Gjun Information Co., Ltd. (which has taught English to over 600,000 people), says that Gjun is leveraging its success in teaching English to develop Chinese language teaching in overseas markets. Gjun provides students with online learning that they can access anywhere and at any time using one of three key device types: mini notebook PCs, mobile Internet devices (MID) and mobile phone handsets.

Free content forever! New business opportunities in free and low-cost online and mobile services

The term “un-felt consumption” may be used sardonically to describe people who are incapable of making small savings, or it may be used when referring to people who have got into the habit of paying for things with their mobile phone handset, which encourages a “enjoy it now, pay later” mindset. The success of Apple’s App Store mobile software service is testimony to the growth of “un-felt consumption”; App Store has thousands of games available for downloading, most of which are either free or sold for the very low price of US$0.99. From the consumer’s point of view, using a service of this type creates little financial burden; services like App Store are spearheading the growth in popularity of new forms of software downloading.  

Making energy saving and carbon reduction an integral part of corporate DNA

With increasing global awareness of the need to save energy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, business enterprises have realized the importance of making energy saving and carbon reduction an integral part of their “corporate DNA,” starting from factory and office building construction and the selection of production equipment, etc. This trend is giving rise to immense new business opportunities. Lu Ming-Kuang, Chairman of CQ Inc., explains that the U.S. still leads the way in computing and networking. American government policy now emphasizes energy saving and carbon reduction; the U.S. government has allocated US$11 billion for research in this area.  

A revival of traditional industries

Victor Taichung Machinery, which at one point in 1998 looked as though it would have to undergo corporate restructuring, has succeeded in turning itself around thanks to increased global demand for machine tools in the last few years. The company has embarked on an aggressive program of e-enablement. This year, Victor Taichung Machinery has been working actively to promote its remote maintenance systems, achieving annual sales volume of over 1,500 units. With these systems, 40% of problems can be solved online, making for a 40% improvement in efficiency. Another Taiwanese company, Tex-Ray Industrial, has successfully integrated high technology, textile technology and innovation to develop “smart clothing” products. By creating new demand, the textile industry is creating new business opportunities.  
 

Taiwan Ranks Seventh in the World in Terms of the Number of Patent Applications 

The number of patent applications constitutes an important indicator of a country’s industrial competitiveness. According to data released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in late 2008, in 2007 a total of around 2.5 million patent applications were made worldwide, of which 484,955 were in the U.S., 443,150 in Japan, 140,725 in the European Union, 693,917 in China, and 245,847 in South Korea. The total number of patent applications received in Taiwan in 2007 was 81,834, putting Taiwan in seventh place worldwide; the 2008 total was 83,601 applications.