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Mission & Goals

Mission

To enhance Hong Kong’s competitiveness in technology-based industries through applied research

Goals

ASTRI's goals are:

performing relevant and high quality R&D for transfer to industry
enhancing Hong Kong's technological human resources development
acting as a magnet to attract international R&D talent to work in Hong Kong
acting as spawning ground for technology entrepreneurs
promoting greater application of technology in industry
providing a focal point for industry-university collaboration in R&D.

Values

Operating Focus

As a publicly-funded applied research institution, ASTRI operates under the firm conviction that it exists for maximizing “public good”, and this public good is measured by economic impact and other benefits it brings to the industry and the community at large.

To generate and sustain economic impact, ASTRI is vigorously focusing on the following:

(a) “Customers” - the companies making use of the technologies and intellectual properties (IP) developed by ASTRI to achieve economic returns. In this regard, ASTRI's research projects are all market-driven catering for the needs of customers and the industry.

(b) “Technology Transfer” - the paid transfer of well-defined product technologies, service technologies or enabling technologies through a licensed contract, a service contract or other legal means from ASTRI to industry customers for commercialization. For ASTRI to link its researches to potential customers for successful commercialization, technology transfers are of paramount importance.

Based on the above considerations, ASTRI builds its operations under the theme “customer-focused R&D”. It is a methodology aimed at maximizing R&D “customer impact” to make successful conversion of researches a systematic process. This process builds customer focus into every aspect of ASTRI's R&D programmes, from initiation to transfer of generated IPs to customers:

Recruit R&D leaders who are not only outstanding technologists and seasoned professionals with extensive management track records, but also specialists possessing extensive “domain knowledge” of industries.
Plan and substantiate compelling technology initiatives to engage potential customers before R&D projects are initiated. These visions are then broken down to become projects for implementation.
Identify customers clearly before the project is approved for launching.
Work with customers as early and closely as possible, treating them as partners rather than receivers of developed technologies.
Build R&D teams that are not only capable of innovating IPs, but also possess the knowledge and skills to make them competitive, market-compatible and serviceable, so that they can be readily transferred to potential customers for manufacturability.
Identify, build and upgrade core technologies continuously to anticipate and satisfy the varying needs of its wide customer base.

ASTRI is rigorously setting quantitative performance targets to ensure that all the customer-focused considerations described above are addressed effectively. These targets including

number of technologies transferred to industry per year
number of patents filed per year as well as number of patents granted and its success ratio
contributions from industry per year

are used as the essential basis for the performance appraisal of the R&D groups and their leaders, and are set at the beginning of the financial year and monitored continuously for attainment.