Abstract
For establishing Taiwan as a global R&D hub, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), Taiwan, initiated a national R&D program entitled: 'The Program to Encourage Multinational Corporations to Set up Innovative R&D Centers in Taiwan' in 2002. The purpose of the program aims to solve the systemic innovation failure prevailing in the Taiwanese industrial innovation system that the Taiwanese firms tend to focus on incremental and development-focused R&D rather than radical and pre-competitive R&D. However, the impacts of the program on Taiwanese innovation system are understudied. The paper proposes an integrated evaluation approach to assess the national impacts as a whole. The paper illustrates the organization of evaluation that deploys four industrial panels and a following 2-wave Delphi questionnaire survey. Based on the Delphi exercise, the study collects expert's opinions on the effectiveness, impacts, process improvement, and future development strategy of the program. The results suggest: (1) the program achieved in facilitating domestic innovation actors to tap on MNC global R&D networks but did little in promoting radical innovation and basic research in Taiwanese industry; (2) providing higher subsidy rate to basic and pre-competitive R&D activities and (3) enhancing MNC R&D centers-national innovation actor collaborative research are the top priorities in the future funding policy. Finally, some recommendations for the further national R&D program evaluation are made