New Taipei City, the largest municipality in northern Taiwan, has been selected by Intelligent Community Forum, an international organization, as one of the global top-7 smart cities for three consecutive years due to its achievement in promoting application of smart city solutions to its administration and services, deputy mayor Yeh Hueh-ching said during a recent interview by Digitimes.

Taoyuan City has been selected by Intelligent Community Forum as one of the global top-7 smart cities for two consecutive times. Cheng Wen-tsan, mayor of the northern Taiwanese city, pointed out during a recent interview by Digitimes that the core mission for a smart city is to solve problems by virtue of innovative technologies to hike efficiency and quality.

The advent of the smart car era is providing an overtaking opportunity for latecomers that can master domain know-how at the client end and know how to develop profitable product design, packaging and sales models based on the latest market trends, according to Wu Hsueh-liang, professor with the Department of International Business at National Taiwan University.

Co-chairman of SVT Angels and co-founder of Acorn Campus Ventures, T Chester Wang taught college courses in Saudi Arabia and invested in real estate in Silicon Valley before he began angel investing...

LuxNet chairman, Hsing Kung, has founded three companies. Among them, SDL was established in 1983, specializing in manufacturing optical communication devices. It was sold for US$41.1 billion 16 years later, awarding early investors a 10,000 times return on their investment. Then, Kung soon started Pine Photonics in 2000, which was acquired four years later...

Power supply product maker Mean Well is seeing steady growth in sales from the industrial power sector - a sector that it has been working in for over 30 years - as more factories switch to automated manufacturing. The company's LED drivers business has also witnessed staggering increases in orders from the consumer lighting, plant lighting and medical care equipment segments...

Technology only accounts for 25% of what makes a startup successful while the CEO's leadership can contribute to 50% of its success, said Chun P Chiu, national policy advisor to the president of Taiwan, InnoBridge Capital's Senior Advisor and an angel investor, who has funded more than 100 startups over a 20-year period.

Co-founder of Acorn Campus Ventures Bob Lin started six businesses, three of which succeeded and the others failed. In addition to being an angel investor, Lin is also the author of top-selling books. Lin has been through it all, from making a fortune to losing every penny. He put his thoughts and wisdom gained from four decades of experiences in his books in hopes of helping more people...

In a media career spanning nearly three decades, Tally Liu served as senior vice president of Knight Ridder, in charge of finances, operations, internal audit and new technologies at the second-largest newspaper company in the United States. Liu took part in Knight Ridder's investment deals and gained extensive experience in Internet business investments...

Sandy Chau, co-founder of Acorn Campus Ventures as well as an active real estate investor, engages in investment undertakings throughout the United States and Greater China. His success in startup investment and business operation can be attributed to what he experienced as he was growing up...