For the purpose of vigorously realizing government policies in the development of advanced Information technology enabled services (ITeS), IDEAS upholds its vision to help secure Taiwan's position as the most advanced information society in Asia and enhance business global competitiveness, thereby, to enrich the quality of life through digital services.

Introduction
The Innovative Digitech-Enabled Applications & Services Institute (IDEAS) is the most preeminent ITeS related research and development institute in Taiwan.  Formed by a merger of III's Advanced e-Commerce Institute (ACI) and IT Promotion Division (ITPD) in 2006, IDEAS aims to upgrade the research and development of IT enabled services through a systematic process using Service Experience Engineering, S.E.E., method. S.E.E. as a service innovation and design method is composed of four stages including technology, market and consumer research (FIND), system R&D of core technology (Design Lab), Innovative Networking of open innovation for service blueprint design (INNOnet), as well as business model development and market trial (Living Zone).  With its mission, IDEAS actively works with the Taiwan government on policy-making in order to upgrade domestic manufacturing and service industries through the promotion of S.E.E. method for innovative service design.  The ultimate goal is to help Taiwan make a smooth transition to a knowledge-based economy.

Mission

• To provide think tank service to Taiwan governmental agencies for promoting open innovation mechanism based on a wide variety of researches.
• To research and develop innovative application systems and business models based on new information and communication technologies, that will be transferred and ultimately increase the value of products and services offered to domestic and global marketplaces by Taiwanese companies.
• To assist local industries in developing innovative service systems by adopting advanced ICT and S.E.E. methodology.

Innovation Focus
The current focuses of IDEAS in terms of research and development are briefly delineated as follows:
 

1. Social Media

The scope of research, design, and development works of social media team covers SER (Social Event Radar) Service and Appliance, and social network analytics to build up a common facility and mechanism for enterprise/organization, industry and society to observe and analyze the trend of opinions on specific products, services, and policies from social network.

SER incorporates social intelligence technology to facilitate a three-tiered Taiwanese socio-economic observation network that consists of Taiwan Socio-economic Observation Center for institutions, Vertical Industry Socio-economic Observation Center for information brokerage services, and Corporate Social Management Control Center for brand enterprises. Built jointly by institutions, information brokerage service providers, and brand enterprises, SER regularly issues social observation indicators to help the top 500 manufacturing/service companies with business development through real-time social marketing and create new business opportunities by cross border crowd sourcing.

The S Rank Index, an evaluation scheme for professional social network capability of a blogger, is also a deliverable which is generated from a databank with scores of 4 aspects of social network professionalism of a blogger, i.e. professional power, influential power, popularity, and disseminating power.
 

2. Smart Contents 

The awareness and ownership of new media devices (also well known as tablet and smart phone) rapidly expand, spurred by marketing campaigns from Apple, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble recently as well as press coverage and word-of-mouth buzz. The behavior of reading, watching, listening and surfing on the mobile devices becomes immersive and personalized. In order to seize the widespread opportunities, IDEAS Institute is cooperating with publishers, television & news corporations, and hardware companies to develop “smart content publication solution”, which is composed of CRoSS platform and “app” factory. CRoSS adaptively modifies the content formats and delivers real-time messages across different devices and platforms based on various needs from environment and users. Using tools provided by the app factory, content producers/distributors could easily create and provide contents by developing their own “apps” on mobile devices.

Collaboratively working with stakeholders in the media industry, new audience rating is another major research subject to develop trustworthy rating scheme which is differentiated from the existing one for basically traditional TV watching behavior. The new audience rating scheme could correctively measure audience behaviors of the various innovative digital contents delivered by diverse devices and mediums.
 

3. Smart Retail 

The subject of smart retail could be explored from 3 perspectives, which are innovative applications in individual stores, eSupply Chain management and eLogistics, and commercial district open innovation and development. At IDEAS Institute the service design, and R&D of solutions are being more emphasized for introducing innovative applications to individual stores, concentrating on user experience investigation, human-device interaction, and business model design in terms of local mobile commerce through social networking. As far as eSCM, eLogistics, and commercial district innovation are concerned, IDEAS Institute puts more emphasis on policy making consultancy on overall strategic planning for open innovation in the retail industry, new applications promotion, open data utilization and management, as well as sustainable development.

The concept of SoLoMo (social, local, and mobile) is adapted in the R&D of solutions and business model research for local mobile commerce promoting to convenient stores, estate dealers, leisure and tourism practitioners and other types of retail stores. O2O (online to offline) operations and services are executed by integrating seamlessly concerning systems to deliver full cycled services to customers who may have good user experiences.
 

4. Smart Manufacturing Service 

Smart manufacturing services developed in IDEAS are currently focusing on “Servolution” which is composed of ServBox, ServAgent, and iFactory, at present mainly adopted by the machine tool and machinery industries. Servolution is simple and straightforward based on what options an operator has for human connection to bridge the gaps.  However, the actual human machine gap-bridging can never be simple and straightforward because of the fast changing tasks and their complication level required.

Servolution aims to replace the human who tackles the incompatibility gaps between machines in workshop.  It implements the solution by setting up an environment, a platform, for all members in the eco-system of machine tool to jointly solve problems caused from incompatibility.  

Servolution introduce a standard interface conceptually similar to Google Apps Marketplace for all members in the eco-system – machine tool manufacturer, operator, tool supplier and third-party machine tool application software developer – to work together.  Using standardized software tools provided under standardized interface of the iFactory, all members collaborate to handle any problem an operator may raise for his particular needs.  Machine tool application issues including those with cross-manufacturer nature could be solved by a solution which is under the efforts of all stakeholders integrated in an efficient and convenient cloud environment, which is also the aim the iFactory is developed.
 

5. Smart Production Service

Smart production service is mainly dedicated to developing a high-performance production management platform that integrates various facilities monitoring and managing the production environment in an orchid greenhouse. The platform contains optimized solution to control equipments and facilities in each cultivation phase, such as the integrating automated irrigating and fertilizing facilities used on automated sliding cultivation beds, and reducing the obstacles to manage facilities of different types or from different makers. It is a first-of-the-kind environmentally compatible and reliable device network in Taiwan.Being device neutral and non-hardware binding, it enables the orchid growers to monitor the production factors, e.g. temperature, moisture, fertilizer, pesticide residue, etc. in a greenhouse environment which is under the sub-tropical climate, and increases the high quality orchid proportion with grade A from 70% to 90%. It also fosters healthy growth from vase seedling to plantlet, and to semi-grown orchid. Providing performance estimation schemeis also part of the network solution which helps support an effective facility procurement planning for automated irrigating and fertilizing equipments, and sliding cultivation beds.

The eventual goal is to use this solution as a core enabling the Taiwanese orchid growers to lift their productivity and quality level, and to develop an Asia Pacific Orchid eMarketplace and Auction Platform by integrating inspection and supply chain tracing system, and eCommerce system in the near future.
 

6. Service Cloud

For the sake of promoting cloud service development and the use of it, IDEAS Institute aims to host a cloud open lab to aggregate various resources of PaaS and IaaS from local and international vendors, and match to ISVs, SIs, and general business/government users who are in need of resources. The service cloud platform is developed for integrating hardware and software resources recruited in the open lab, and to provide a PaaS environment for small and medium sized ISVs and SIs to develop their own solutions of SaaS. In addition, IDEAS Institute also provides its own cloud services at the SaaS layer with respect to food chain tracing, carbon footprint recording and searching, sustainable manufacturing services in machine tools and machinery, as well as web service incubation. At the PaaS layer, high performance, dynamic resource dispatching module is being researched for more efficient storage service to support ISVs and SIs to develop their SaaS solutions for ticketing, ERP, and other services which tend to create heavy traffic of mass inquiry and needs for massive updating caused by data transaction.

The R&D activities of the above six vertical domains are strictly guided by a mechanism defined in Design Lab. The operation in Design Lab has to do with ICT application system design and development. It applies the concept of innovative service with the state-of-the-art information and communication technology, goes through the disciplined processes with respect to concept and service proof (POC, POS) to come out a clearly proven and transparent prototype, which will be further developed to a marketable solution in a context of living lab in order to be transferred to different enterprises.
 

7. FIND

Cooperating with some major international organizations, namely the WEF, ITU, and EIU, over the past 10 years, IDEAS has built up its reputation on National Competitiveness index and other relevant ICT application Indices for the industry competitiveness. The data and information provided by IDEAS have been quoted by many well-known global organizations. It also executed various FIND projects to research and accumulate the intelligence of global ICT development trend,  The FIND projects also cover researches on business models of new ICT applications, market opportunities and entry models for specific technologies, consumer behavior of mobile applications and digital contents, publication, and consultancy based on database resource of the above mentioned researches. Owing to its research and service capacity IDEAS has become one of the most important think-tanks of e-business and innovative services for both the government and the ICT industry in Taiwan.The research results will be expanded to the public through its official website (www.find.org.tw) and online databank (www.databank.org.tw).  Both online channels have accumulated over 100 thousand registered members.


8. S.E.E. as a Methodology for Service Innovation and Design

In response to the demand of service innovation and design from the industry, IDEAS Institute started the research on service science since 2006. It introduced and transferred knowledge in respect of service design from Fraunhofer IAO of Germany, the largest research organization in Europe, in 2007, and combined the experiences in actual service design from IDEO of the USA. Together with the outcomes generated from internal researches and collaboration with local academia, IDEAS developed a full suite of Service Experience Engineering, S.E.E., methodology which is composed of:

• Service design process, i.e. FIND, INNOnet, Design Lab, and Living Zone;
• Tools and methods developed for respective processes;
• Data and service models of specific innovative services;
• A set of curricula for training course offered to the industry, and the training materials;
• A full service innovation and design MBA program offered to academia, and the courseware;
• Cases of S.E.E. method adoption in organization restructuring, serevice design, knowledge transfer for internalization, etc.
• A dissemination scheme to promote open innovation in various ITeS value chains.
   

 9. Service Design Consultancy

(People) III IDEAS is the first service design consultancy in Taiwan. We are a multi-disciplinary team that embraces design, computer science technology, management and enterprise. We commit to leveraging our combined expertise to help the Taiwanese companies innovate and prosper.

(Method) Our service design process is an adaption of the most effective methods of diverse fields, including marketing, ethnology, design, and engineering. This approach helps organizations discover customer needs, envision the future of service, and develop creative solutions to ensure the viability, desirability, and feasibility of service innovations.Still, we continuously improve it.
 

(Project) We give advice to the leading firms in Taiwan, such as Sinyi, MWF, HCT, D-Link, etc., on a wide range of service design and innovation projects. We also devote ourselves to disseminate service design concept and methodology in both academic and business worlds.
 

10. Living Lab

For the purpose of understanding the marketplace and customer needs to increase the chance of business success, IDEAS Institute has created “Taiwan Living Lab” to assists domestic enterprises in processing validating operations from Proof of Concept (PoC), Proof of Service (PoS) to Proof of Business (PoB). Taiwan Living Lab was officially opened in Minsheng Community of Taipei City in 2008, and elected as member of ENOLL in the third wave. Living Lab, an innovative research mechanism to improve the research and development process of innovative products/services, brings the laboratory environment to users, and experiments new service modelsin real life contexts. Taiwan Living Lab invites public-sectors, research institutions and business units to participate in the open innovation activity.

The test fields can be a small residential community, a district of a city or even a whole city. Living Lab collects the genuine feedback from end users through innovative service models to help research parties continuously improve their product/service design and quality to fulfill user needs to maximize the market applicability and business value.



Utilizing the user-driven innovative model, Taiwan Living Lab has developed innovative products/services in various domains, including healthcare, entertainment, education, digital communication, smart shopping, green energy, security and etc. Up to date, there are more than 30 products/services being implemented in Taiwan Living Lab, over 400,000 user feedbacks are collected, and 10 of the services are currently in the proof of service(POS) phase.
 

11. IDEAS Bake

IDEAS gathered more than one hundred [100] industry elites to design and re-enhance the value-chain of the ICT application services in Taiwan, which is primarily to attract innovative entrepreneur teams to interact with potential investors, and provide a platform for the exchange of new concepts of and experiences in Web 2.0 technology in Taiwan.  This platform has evolved to provide further incubation service for start-ups, which is called IDEAS Bake.  It also provides consultancy on development strategies such as manufacturing serviceability,Dechnology (adding values to ICT solutions by esthetical and industrial design), remote learning, and Near Field Commerce to add values to both government policy and industry investment.

The concept behind IDEAS Bake is to provide a packaged business incubation platform for Internet startups to thrive. Within the program, space, mentoring, coaching and other resources are provided, as well as links to other entrepreneurial hubs around the world, linking Taiwanese entrepreneurs with those in other countries. At the same time, IDEAS Bake is a channel for international startups to localize their services in Asia, and gives significant opportunities for growth, development and innovation.

IDEAS Show is an annual event to aggregate innovative web service start-ups, investors, telecomm operators, and those who are interested in collecting information of new applications and business models for the next wave of development. Having been organized by the Bake team since 2008, IDEAS Show has continually attracted public attentions and become an arena for young people to compete for creativity and business innovation. IDEAS Show has collected more than 1000 entrepreneur teams since 2008, 115 start-up companies went through the IDEAS Show Award contests. Those who win the IDEAS Show Awards are exposed to the local and global venture capitals and enterprise investors to nurture their business development. Totally, there have been more than USD30 million invested to the start-ups.