Taiwan sets its sights on becoming a global hub of tech entrepreneurship and Internet of Things research and development.

The Asian Silicon Valley initiative, one of five major industrial development plans outlined by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), aims to transform Taiwan into a research and development (R&D) hub for the Internet of Things (IoT) sector as well as a global center of tech entrepreneurship. The project, which will be carried out primarily in the northern city of Taoyuan, will include a raft of measures to boost domestic innovation and international collaboration on cutting-edge technologies and applications.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — From Boston to Seattle, cities across the country are vying to create technology hubs, spurring real estate developments to attract start-ups and young entrepreneurs.

To the south, this smaller but thriving city is seeing returns on its effort to do the same. Chattanooga has leveraged its lightning-fast broadband connections to develop a tech scene in its recently designed innovation district, a 140-acre section of its compact central business district.

Chunghwa Telecom Co (CHT, 中華電信), the nation’s biggest telecom operator, yesterday launched its new cloud computing data center in a bid to accelerate the nation’s digital economy and industry transformation.

“We aim to elevate Taiwan to one of the leading data hubs in Asia and attract international businesses, such as over-the-top content providers, as well as boosting the nation’s financial technology development,” chairman Rick Tsai (蔡力行) said at the facility’s opening ceremony in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋).

(Bloomberg) -- The Bloomberg Advantage with Carol Massar and Cory Johnson.

Robert Bell Founder Intelligent Community Forum Discussing how much of the chaos we are seeing in our cities, in our country and the world is “future shock", the explosive pace of technology advances that may be interconnecting us more than we can handle.

To what degree does culture shape commerce? Does our national identity define us in the marketplace? Many people think so, to the degree that the typical Canadian entrepreneur is often typecast as being more timid and less prone to take risks than his or her counterpart in the United States. Although there are many elements of truth, this generalization begins to fall apart when we consider the depth, breadth and diversity of what it means to be Canadian. In other words, when it comes to business, a one-size-fits-all “Canadian approach” simply doesn’t exist.

Sometime this fall, a former Blackberry manufacturing plant turned light-infused office building will open its doors to companies in a Waterloo, Ontario area branded as the Idea Quarter, a mixed-use technology cluster near the University of Waterloo and the region’s light rail transit system.

When Spear Street Capital set out to revitalize that area, it set its sights on redeveloping the 215,000-square-foot building at 451 Phillip Street, a space that RIM had acquired in the late 1990s. There was an opportunity to rebirth a community and free up space for companies who could not previously find room in the neighbourhood.

The small American rural city of Ashland appeared on our Smart21 list for the first time in 2007. Located in the mountains of southern Oregon, Ashland (population 22,000) has a seasonal economy built on forestry and, as home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, on tourism.

Both are seasonal businesses, so Ashland set out in 1997 to diversify its economy by building a metropolitan fiber network. The deployment went well: from 1997 to 2006, it helped add 517 businesses to a town of just over 10,000 postal addresses. New companies sprang up in e-commerce and audio books as well as such esoteric technologies as the handling of unexploded ordinance.

Access Ventures' David Taliaferro saw how Kiva loan programs had helped grow Louisville's small businesses from the ground-up. So, the company went shopping to add another city to its repertoire.

Taliaferro, a Kiva Fellow and director of microfinance with Access Ventures, said the firm wanted to implement and support a Kiva program in a city with a growing business environment, something comparable to Louisville. About a year later, the firm will expand its Kiva footprint to Columbus, Ohio.

Fredericton Mayor Mike O’Brien is encouraging residents to draw on the walls on the new ‘Imagination Station’ located downtown- with chalk.

The new information hub officially launched Thursday, and allows residents a chance to share their feedback, ideas and concerns about the city. The initiative is part of the Imagine Fredericton community engagement process that will lead to the development of a new Growth Management Strategy and Municipal Plan.

DIAMOND BAR, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SolarMax LED, through its wholly owned subsidiary ActOne Communications, Inc., has landed a multi-million dollar California Department of Transportation contract to replace more than 29,000 aging street lights with the Southern California company’s leading-edge, high-efficiency LED luminaires. Initial work will focus on public roadways and arterials across Sacramento County.