Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) are both examples of a technology-transfer model distinct from the university-based system most CASRAI readers know from U.S., Japanese, or South Korean institutions: the government research institute (GRI) model, in which the state itself funds and operates the research organization, rather than funding individual university faculty. Like Germany’s Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, ITRI and A*STAR are mission-driven applied-research institutes whose core purpose is industrial competitiveness, not academic knowledge production for its own sake — and technology transfer at both is built into the institute’s founding mandate rather than layered on afterward through a separate licensing office.
The two institutes are frequently cited together in innovation-policy literature because they represent two different variants of the same GRI approach. ITRI is best known for a small number of very large, capital-intensive corporate spinoffs that seeded an entire national industry. A*STAR runs a broader portfolio of research institutes and commercializes primarily through licensing and a larger number of smaller startups. Understanding both, and how they differ, is useful for research administrators and technology-transfer professionals benchmarking institutional models or working with either country’s research ecosystem.
What ITRI is
The Industrial Technology Research Institute was established in Taiwan in 1973 as a nonprofit applied-research organization under the government’s economic-development ministry, headquartered in Hsinchu. Its founding mission was to develop and transfer technology that would build up domestic industrial capability in sectors Taiwan did not yet have, rather than to conduct curiosity-driven basic research. ITRI’s own institutional history centers the organization’s role in creating Taiwan’s semiconductor industry largely from nothing, and this is the single most historically significant fact about ITRI’s technology-transfer track record.
The UMC and TSMC spinoffs
In 1980, ITRI spun off United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), Taiwan’s first integrated-circuit company, transferring the 4-inch wafer fabrication technology ITRI had developed together with the R&D team that had built it. UMC went on to become the first Taiwanese semiconductor company listed on the country’s stock exchange, in 1985.
The larger and better-known spinoff followed in 1987. ITRI recruited Morris Chang — former head of Texas Instruments’ semiconductor division — to serve as ITRI’s president starting in 1985, specifically to lead a national VLSI (very-large-scale integration) development project built around 6-inch wafer technology, undertaken in collaboration with the Dutch electronics company Philips. When that project reached commercial maturity, ITRI spun off Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), transferring its fabs, equipment, technology, and 98 ITRI research professionals to the new company, with Philips contributing capital and licensed VLSI technology. TSMC’s founding also introduced what was then a novel business model to the semiconductor industry: the pure-play foundry, a manufacturer that produces chips designed by other companies rather than designing and selling its own, which is now the dominant model for advanced chip fabrication worldwide. ITRI followed with a further, smaller spinoff, Taiwan Mask Corporation, in 1989, to provide photomask production services supporting the domestic IC design industry that had grown up around UMC and TSMC.
These are, by a wide margin, the most consequential technology transfers in ITRI’s history and the reason ITRI is cited internationally as a reference case for state-directed industrial technology transfer — TSMC alone grew into the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry. It is worth being precise about what actually happened, since the story is easy to compress inaccurately: ITRI did not simply license a patent to an existing company. It ran the applied-research and pilot-production program itself, using government and later Philips capital, and then transferred the resulting technology, equipment, and trained personnel wholesale into newly incorporated companies in which government-linked and, in TSMC’s case, private and foreign capital held equity.
ITRI beyond semiconductors
ITRI’s mandate has never been limited to semiconductors. The institute continues to conduct applied research and transfer technology across sectors including electronics and ICT, biomedical technology, green energy and materials, and mechanical and systems engineering, and it continues to generate spinoff companies, patents, and licenses to existing industry as part of its ordinary operations, not only through the landmark 1980s spinoffs. For research administrators, the operational takeaway is that ITRI’s transfer model is spinoff-centric by design: the institute is set up to build a technology to the point of commercial readiness internally, including training the people who will run the resulting company, rather than to disclose an invention and search for an external licensee, which is the sequence university invention disclosure and the standard technology transfer process describe for a Bayh-Dole-style TTO.
What A*STAR is
The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) is a statutory board of the Singapore government under the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Rather than operating a single institute, A*STAR runs a network of research institutes and centers — spanning biomedical sciences, advanced manufacturing and engineering, and digital and urban technology domains — concentrated in Singapore’s Biopolis and Fusionopolis research precincts. A*STAR both performs mission-oriented public research through these institutes and funds and administers a portion of Singapore’s national research grants, a dual role CASRAI’s Singapore research funding landscape guide covers in more detail alongside the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Fund; readers who need A*STAR’s grant and scholarship programs specifically, rather than its technology-transfer function, should see CASRAI’s dedicated A*STAR funding and scholarships guide.
How A*STAR commercializes research
A*STAR’s commercialization function was originally consolidated in a dedicated subsidiary, Exploit Technologies Pte Ltd (ETPL), established in 2002 specifically to market and license A*STAR’s research institutes’ technologies and to hold the organization’s patent portfolio centrally rather than leaving IP management dispersed across individual institutes. Reported figures published around ETPL’s tenth anniversary credited it with having spun off more than 40 startups, managed a portfolio of more than 3,500 active patents and applications, and granted more than 400 licenses; treat that specific figure as a historical milestone from that period rather than a current statistic, since A*STAR’s commercialization structure and reporting have evolved since.
That commercialization function now operates as part of A*STAR’s Innovation & Enterprise (I&E) division, which handles industry partnerships, exclusive and non-exclusive technology licensing, and venture building for deep-tech spinouts through its Venture Creation and Growth program, translating research from across A*STAR’s institutes into industry collaborations, licenses, and new companies. Structurally, this is a centralized-office model — one commercialization function serving many research institutes — closer in shape to a large university TTO serving many departments than to ITRI’s pattern of building a single technology through to a dedicated spinoff company.
Comparing the two models
ITRI and A*STAR are both government-funded, government-directed applied-research institutes rather than university-affiliated ones, which is what puts them in the same category as Fraunhofer and distinct from the disclose-then-license, faculty-invention model that the U.S. Bayh-Dole Act shaped and that CASRAI’s Japan TLO Act and South Korea TLO guides describe. Within that shared category, though, the two differ in emphasis:
- Unit of transfer. ITRI’s landmark transfers moved an entire capability — fabs, equipment, technology, and trained staff — into a small number of large, purpose-built spinoff corporations. A*STAR’s commercialization activity is spread across a much larger number of licenses and smaller startups originating from its many separate research institutes.
- Organizational structure. ITRI operated as the single applied-research body executing a national technology program and then exiting into a new company. A*STAR is a multi-institute research agency with a centralized commercialization office (I&E, formerly ETPL) that serves institutes working across a wide range of technical domains simultaneously, more comparable in that respect to how a large university centralizes technology transfer across many academic departments.
- Government relationship. Both are government bodies, but ITRI’s marquee spinoffs (UMC, TSMC) involved direct state industrial-policy decisions to build a specific national industry, made in coordination with Taiwan’s premier’s office in the 1970s-80s. A*STAR is a standing statutory board with an ongoing, broader research and grant-funding mandate under Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry, rather than a single-purpose vehicle for one industrial buildout.
- Track record framing. ITRI’s reputation rests overwhelmingly on the outsized, singular success of TSMC becoming the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry. A*STAR’s reported track record is framed in portfolio terms — patent counts, license counts, and startup counts aggregated across many institutes and technology areas rather than one dominant outcome.
For a research administrator or technology-transfer professional, the practical lesson from comparing the two is that “government research institute” is not a single model. Some GRIs, like ITRI historically and Fraunhofer today, transfer technology by building it to commercial readiness internally and then exiting into industry, whether as a spinoff or as ongoing contract research. Others, like A*STAR, transfer technology more through a centralized licensing and venture-building office serving a diversified research portfolio, a structure closer to what CASRAI’s technology transfer and innovation content describes for IP licensing and commercialization agreements and startup formation generally. Knowing which pattern a given GRI follows matters directly for how a partnering institution should expect IP terms, equity participation, and licensing negotiations to be structured.
Where this fits among other national models
ITRI and A*STAR join a set of national and sub-national technology-transfer models CASRAI covers for comparison purposes, including Germany’s contract-research-funded Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Israel’s university-affiliated Yissum, Yeda, and Ramot for-profit subsidiaries, South Korea’s university TLO system under its Technology Transfer Promotion Act, Japan’s TLO Act, and France’s regional SATT network. ITRI and A*STAR sit closer to Fraunhofer than to the other four: all three are government research institutes performing research directly, rather than university offices licensing faculty inventions, which is the structural line CASRAI’s broader technology-transfer coverage draws between these national approaches. Readers researching Taiwan’s or Singapore’s wider research-funding ecosystem may also want CASRAI’s coverage of Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and Singapore’s National Research Foundation, which fund research alongside, respectively, ITRI and A*STAR rather than performing it directly.
Frequently asked questions
Did ITRI really create TSMC?
Yes, in the specific sense that matters for technology-transfer purposes: ITRI ran the government-funded VLSI development project using 6-inch wafer technology, then in 1987 spun the resulting capability out into a newly incorporated company, transferring fabs, equipment, technology, and 98 ITRI research staff. Philips, the Dutch electronics company, contributed capital and licensed technology to the new company alongside ITRI’s contribution. TSMC was not an existing company that simply licensed a patent from ITRI; it was created as the vehicle for the transfer itself.
Is A*STAR a university?
No. A*STAR is a statutory board of the Singapore government, not a degree-granting university. Its research institutes are staffed by research scientists and engineers, and while A*STAR runs scholarship and fellowship programs (covered in CASRAI’s A*STAR funding and scholarships guide) that support students who often study at Singapore’s universities, A*STAR itself performs research and commercializes it directly rather than functioning as an academic institution.
Do ITRI and A*STAR follow the Bayh-Dole Act?
No. Bayh-Dole is U.S. federal law governing inventions made with U.S. federal funding at U.S. universities, nonprofits, and small businesses; it has no jurisdiction over a Taiwanese or Singaporean government research institute. Both ITRI’s and A*STAR’s technology-transfer and IP arrangements are governed by their own national law and internal policy, not by U.S. statute.
Which model has produced a bigger commercial outcome?
In terms of a single outcome, ITRI’s TSMC spinoff is the more consequential event by a wide margin: TSMC grew into the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry and anchors Taiwan’s entire chip industry. A*STAR’s commercialization activity is not organized around producing one comparable flagship company; its track record is reported instead as an aggregate portfolio of licenses, patents, and startups spread across many research institutes and technology domains, which is a different kind of success to measure and compare.
