An Investigation of Human Resource Development of the Digital Content Industry in Taiwan Jieh Hsiang Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering National Taiwan University Institute of Information Science Academia Sinica
Hsueh-hua Chen Department of Library and Information Science National Taiwan University
[email protected]
Hsiang-chun Chen, Chu-ying Kuo National Digital Archives Program, Applications & Services Division
{Florence,cypayo}@mail.lis.ntu.ed u.tw
[email protected] ABSTRACT The digital content industry has emerged as an important part of the knowledge economy. While designating the digital content industry as one of the two flagship industries for its future, the Taiwanese government has created a Digital Content Institute (DCI) to coordinate the effort of ensuring the availability of a highly versatile and multi-talented workforce that is crucial for the industry to succeed. The DCI, not designated as a regular educational institution, is under the Ministry of Economic Affairs and is responsible for producing enough skilled manpower to expedite the development of the industry. This paper reports a study of the current status of the human resource development of the digital content industry in Taiwan. The research is based on in-depth interviews of the leading companies in Taiwan to investigate the human resource structure, job varieties and urgency, talent levels, core competencies, as well as recruitments and training methods in different sectors of the digital content industry. The findings were summarized and a human resource development strategy was laid out and presented to DCI for their reference.
Keyword Digital content industry, human resource
1. RESEARCH BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Facing with the growing trend of global information technology and knowledge-based economy, the Executive Yuan of R.O.C. passed the “Challenge 2008: National Development Plan” in May 2002 [1]. In the four major investments singled out, it identifies two trillion-dollar industries (semiconductor and image display) and two new rising stars：bio-technology and “digital content” which are crucial for the economic future of the country. According to the 2006 Taiwan Industry Development Prospect Plan, the semiconductor industry value will reach NT$1.59 trillion and the image display industry value will reach NT$1.37 trillion [2]. Furthermore, the “Digital Content Industry Development and Promotion Plan” [3], points out that the strategy for developing the digital content industry of Taiwan shall include establishing
the environment and regulations suitable for the rapid growth of the industry, attracting investment and international cooperation, assisting in the implementation of investment and tax incentives, enlarging the human resource pool of the innovative and managerial talent needed by the industry, accelerating the development of key technologies and products, assisting companies to enhance their international marketing capability and competitiveness, and implementing broad applications of digital content in Taiwan. A key factor in the success of any industry is a steady supply of well-trained and talented people. In addition to fulfilling the present need of the industry, it is also important to lay a foundation for long-term human resource development so that the people produced also match the projected growth of the industry. To coordinate the effort of meeting the human resource need of the digital content industry, the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs established the “Digital Content Institute” (DCI). The goal of the institute is to produce high-qualified workforce that can be immediately deployed by integrating education resources in universities and colleges, research institutes and business sectors [4]. The first task that DCI needs to tackle is to understand the demand and supply of manpower of the industry, that is, what type of people the industry wants and where the people come from. This job is challenging because the digital content industry in Taiwan is still at its infancy and not much has been studied. Furthermore, since the industry is young and its growth curve unstable, any prediction of numbers could be seriously off the mark. In mid 2003, our research team at the National Taiwan University was commissioned by DCI to design a feasible human resource development strategy for their reference. We used a qualitative research method based on semi-structured in-depth interviews of representative companies. (A quantitative study, which tries to determine the number of people needed by the industry, was assigned to a different research team.) We investigated the current employment situation, the type of work needed in each sector, the respective requirement of talent and expertise, how recruiting is done in individual companies, what the companies expect from their employees, the type of training programs the companies provide for the new comers, and the kind of assistance they expect to receive from DCI, The purpose of this research can be summed up into the following four points: z
Investigate the human resource structure of the digital content industry and urgency (priority) in talent demand.
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Analyze the recruiting and training methods for
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people of different job levels in the industry. z
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Analyze the core competencies of different expertise levels in the digital content industry and make suggestions on the directions for the training curricula of DCI. Present an industry human resource development strategy to serve as a reference direction for DCI.
2. DIGITAL CONTENT INDUSTRY IN TAIWAN -- CURRENT STATUS In response to the rapid development of the knowledge economy and information technology, the Taiwanese government designated year 2002 as “Digital Year One”. The digital content industry was designated as one of the four flagship industries crucial for the future of the island, and the government was also planning to establish a digital content venture capital fund, the Digital Content Institute, and the Digital Content Industrial Park [5]. The Digital Content Industry Promotion Office of the Ministry of Economic Affairs categorizes the digital content industry of Taiwan into eight major domains [6]: z
Digital games: This includes content, software, and device of computer games on different platforms such as TV, PC, handheld devices, arcade, and on-line games.
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Computer animation: This means the utilization of computer images for entertainment and other commercial sectors, such as films, games, network communication, architecture, and industrial design.
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Digital learning: This includes all learning activity via digital devices such as e-learning, distance learning, and computer aided instruction, and the associated content production, learning software, and devices.
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Audio and video applications: This includes the digitization of existing audio and video contents, novel applications of digital audio and video contents, digital TV, and video-on-demand.
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Mobile content: This category utilizes mobile communication network to provide data content and services including mobile phone messages and mobile data services including image, video, GIS and GPS.
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Network services: This category provides services such as network content, line connection, storage, transmission and broadcast including services such as Internet Content Provider (ICP), Application Service Provider (ASP), Internet Service Provider (ISP), and Internet Data Center (IDC).
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Content software: This category provides the software tools and platforms necessary to facilitate the creation of digital contents and their transmission, preservation and services.
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Digital publishing and digital archives: This includes digital publishing, digital archives, electronic
database (such as news, images, data, etc.), authorization and certification services. The output of Taiwan’s digitized content industry reached NT$153.7 billion (about US$ 4.39 billion) in 2002 with a growth of 15.2% over 2001. It is estimated it should maintain a growth rate of 20% per year over the next few years and, by 2006, the production value should reach NT$370 billion. Presently, the number of digital content companies in Taiwan is about 1,681 and the objective is to increase the number to 3,000 by 2006. The number of employees increased to 33,000 from about 30,000 in 2001. It is hoped that before 2006, 40,000 job opportunities can be created so that the number of employees in this industry can be increased to 70,000. Although export only amounts to 12% of the total production value, the target is to expand the international market to 30% by 2006 so that the industry is competitive globally [7]. In respond to the government policy, the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economics set up the “Digital Content Industry Promotion Office” [8] as the window for the promotion and guidance of this industry. One of the main missions of the office is to ensure that the market has an ample supply of talent for the digital content industry. To reach this goal, the office established the Digital Content Institute (DCI) to integrate and coordinate educational from various sectors [9]. While not a regular educational institute itself, DCI draws its students from universities and colleges, research institutes, and the industry. The strategy of DCI is two-fold. In addition to equip potential workers with enough preparation to enter the digital content market, it also helps companies training their existing employees to move on to higher level of positions in the company [9]. DCI does not have its own teaching staff. Thus it offers courses (usually 300-hour training courses) through affiliated partners such as universities and other educational institutes [11]. By serving as a coordinator and providing fund, DCI hopes to bridge the cap between existing educational programs and industrial needs, especially at the medium and high level. Currently there are over 10 participating partners that offer courses [10]. The number is expected to reach 30 in the forthcoming fiscal year. Although the digital content industry covers eight different domains, DCI selected only “3D animation” and “computer games” as the main targets during its first year of operation. It is hoped that the experience drawn during the first year can be applied to the other subject domains in the following years. The subject area is further divided into four categories, including creative design and planning, programming of games, video/audio design, and marketing/management. It is expected to train 200 new talents and 1000 on-the-job talents [12]. The digital content industry is a typical industry in the information age, in the sense that it needs people with training in different disciplines such as art, technology, and management. Such people are usually hard to produce through the traditional education system. By setting up a mechanism to facilitate the collaboration between educational institutions and industry to produce the high-level talents that the industry needs, the DCI hopes to set a precedent for other similar industries in the knowledge economy to follow.
3. RESEARCH DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION 2
This research adopts a qualitative approach using semi-structured in-depth interviews as the main method for collecting information. The results reached then went through focus groups for modifications and refinements. The research targets are leading companies in the eight domains of the digital content industry. Due to the limitation of time, manpower and funding, only two companies in each domain were selected for in-depth interviews. The interviews and focus groups were conducted between July and November 2003. We remark that we did not use a quantitative/questionnaire approach because in such a young and emerging industry, people often do not know how to respond to questions, especially if they were asked to fill in figures. The interviews were all conducted in the respective companies, and the entire process is recorded (with the consent of the interviewees). They were then transcribed verbatim for later analysis. In addition to the actual interview, the interactions within the company, the overall atmosphere, and other non-verbal gestures also revealed a great deal about the company being visited. Seven parameters were considered in order to decide the human resource structure of the industry. They are: z
Domains of industry: job varieties and descriptions in each of the eight aforementioned industrial domains.
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Technical skill level: high, medium, and low.
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Urgency of manpower: strong, medium, modest.
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Recruiting mechanism: recruiting methods and channels.
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Core expertise: the main expertise required for each job variety.
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Career advancement training mechanism: mechanisms of makeup training for new employees and advancement training for existing employees.
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Career advancement training courses and source of teachers.
The outline of the interviews includes four parts: z
Structure of human resources: This part deals with the job varieties of the interviewed company, their proportions in the entire staff, the core expertise of each variety and the urgency.
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Source of recruits: This part tries to find how the company recruits people, the difficulty encountered, how the company trains people to go up the corporate ladder, and the gap between what the universities produce and what the company needs.
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Future developments: This part asks about the future plans of the company, the direction it is going, the prospect it has on Taiwan’s digital content industry, and future human resource needs.
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Domain-specific issues: Different domains have their own needs, culture, and organization. This part tries to explore the differences among different sectors of the digital content industry in order to differentiate their needs more precisely.
4. RESEARCH FINDINGS In this section we present a summary of our findings. They were reached after a careful analysis of the transcribed interviews. They were also presented to the focus groups for further comments and modifications.
4.1 Domains of industry 4.1.1 Different industrial sectors need different courses The eight different domains of digital content industry require different talents with different expertise. The level of maturity of each domain and the urgency of human resource are also quite different. Thus DCI should design strategies and courses of human development that are tailored to each individual industrial sector.
4.2 Skill level 4.2.1 A learning map for each domain The technical skill levels of workers in the digital content industry can be roughly divided into high, medium, and moderate. Since the professional capability required by each level is different, it is important to identify the expertise that is crucial for people at each level and design courses accordingly. It is, therefore, important to design a learning map of expertise for each industrial domain. Each learning map should be comprehensive enough to give an overall view of the entire landscape of the respective domain, from which paths can be drawn for each job category and courses can be designed accordingly. The learning map concept offers several advantages. In addition to being used as a floor plan to design courses and make them modular, the learning map also provides each prospective and current worker a landscape of where they are in the company and the leaning path they can choose in order to move on to the next level.
4.2.2 The emphasis on core job categories and expertise As with any industry, the digital content industry requires talents that are unique in its industry as well as other supporting staff. The former focuses on product development that is pertinent to the industry and the latter provides office and business support. While it is important for everyone in the industry to have a clear view of what the industry is, we feel that the main mission of DCI should be to produce talents that are central to the industry, especially in terms of technical and domain-specific competence. The following is a partial list of core job descriptions in each domain: z Digital games: programmers for games, creative designers and planners, video and audio designers, game producers. z Computer animation: directors, producers, playwright, planning personnel, animators, graphic artists, design artists, post-production managers and staff. z Digital learning: digital training planners, course designers, educational material planners and producers,
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managers and staff in educational principle, knowledge and creativity management, research and operational management, and programmers. z Video and audio applications: AV engineers and editors, engineers in video streaming, compression, interactive content production technology, and virtual reality, creativity planners and manages, playwright, computer animators, engineers in telecommunication technology. z Mobile content: software engineers, system developers, art designer personnel. z Network services: telecommunication, communication, electronic, electrical engineering, information, information management z Content software: program designers, program analysts, system analysts, testing engineers, programmers, product and project managers. z Digital publishing and digital archives: editors, produce managers, intellectual property right personnel, managers and engineers in information management, digital libraries, and programming. Staff that are common to all include sales, marketing, computer network systems, management, finance and accounting, customer service, quality management, etc. These people have greater mobility and require less domain-specific expertise. Since an institution such as DCI should focus on producing people with core competence, it need not emphasize on fulfilling personnel need of general skill.
4.3 Urgency of manpower 4.3.1 The focus on medium and high level personnel In all the interviews, we felt the urgent need of companies for medium and high level people. Although the current design of 300-hours training courses offered by DCI may do a good job bridging the technical gap between the education of a fresh college graduate the expectation of the company, it is not helpful in producing the kind of high level people urgently sought by the industry. Thus it is important to design courses that are suitable for advancement. These courses could be seminars with world-renowned speakers or people with experience in managing large scale projects. They may even require sending people overseas for seminars or to get involved in international collaborations.
4.3.2 Shortage of interdisciplinary and integration talents As is the case in higher education everywhere, universities in Taiwan have academic departments as their basic units. Although a college graduate may be well-trained in one discipline, he often does not have sufficient knowledge or interest of things outside of his main area of studies. The content industry is, unfortunately, inherently interdisciplinary. Its products often require as much know-how in arts and humanities as in technology. The user-centered areas such as learning and games require even more knowledge in human interface, education, and psychology. It is thus imperative to produce people with an interdisciplinary mindset. System integration and project integration are also key
factors in the success of industries such as games, animations, leaning, and digital publishing and archive.
4.4 Recruiting mechanism 4.4.1 Diversity in recruiting Although the nature of digital content industries may vary from one another, the recruiting strategies of the companies in Taiwan turn out to be surprisingly similar. The high level personnel, although sometimes promoted internally, are often lured away from a similar company or acquired from oversea. The medium level managers are promoted internally or obtained from a similar company (often a competitor). The beginner level people are mostly newly recruited graduates. It should be noted that the companies often emphasize on a potential employee: the college from which he graduates, and the prospect’s portfolio.
4.4.2 Diversity of training methods The new recruits often need to be trained before being put on real projects. Existing personnel also often go through advancement training courses before or after receiving promotion. The types and content of training for people of different levels and different job categories are quite different. For example, while new recruits may be put through an extensive training program, medium or high level personnel often can only afford a short term cultivation program such as an intensive workshop for a few days.
4.4.3 Diversity of talent pool and cultivation channels The current cultivation channel is diverse, including formal school education, extension school education, government and training institutions, as well as company’s own in-house training. However, each has its own merit and drawbacks. People with a formal training background often have wider knowledge but do not have enough practical experience. A person without a formal background, on the other hand, are sometimes less capable of completing the kind of advancement training necessary for the next level. In our studies, we observed that most companies seem to prefer hiring people with a formal training in a field that is closely related to the digital content industry. Thus we recommend that DCI should build closer ties with universities and try to bridge the gap with theory and practice.
4.4.4 Industry/academia collaboration mechanism To expedite the deployment of university graduates to the industry, mechanisms should be established to provide students with sufficient exposure to the industry during their education. DCI can play an important role in this regard. As an intermediary between industry and academia, DCI can help universities design courses and programs with input from the industry, and can also provide students with internship and summer job opportunities sponsored by the companies.
4.5 Core expertise 4.5.1 Domain knowledge and hand-on experience Many interviewees express that a new worker should have some domain knowledge of that industry as well as practical experience. In addition to the industry/academia cooperation mechanism mentioned before, it is also desirable to encourage students to create their portfolio or to produce concrete products during their
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education. Summer internship is another good way of getting experience while still in school.
4.5.2 Interdisciplinary talent and integration One of the most difficult talents to obtain in the digital content industry is one that is capable of integrating the various parts of a project. While this type of integration talent can often be achieved only through experience, preparation can still be provided through an interdisciplinary education. For example in a program composed of information technology, instructional technology, art design, educational psychology and methodology should give the student a sound interdisciplinary background for entering the digital learning industry.
4.5.3 International perspective No digital content industry can cater only to its domestic market. Even the Hollywood movie industry, with the biggest content industry in the world, draws a significant portion of its income from its world-wide distribution. Taiwan’s digital content industry also needs to extend its reach well beyond the 23 million island residents to survive. How to develop an international perspective and, in particular, one that can attract the potential Chinese speaking market of 1.3 billion people is the key of success for Taiwan’s content industry.
4.5.4 Professional certification Certification can be used to enforce a standard on the professionals. An enterprise can use a reputable certification system to significantly improve its recruiting efficiency. Currently in Taiwan there are nine major categories in the “Information Professional Certification” system run by the Ministry of Economic Affairs [10]. They are system analysis, software design, network communication, information security, project management, embedded system, database development, e-learning, and digital content. The latter two were created in 2003 specifically for the digital content industry. The main certificates are for digital games and animation programming skills such as 3D animation and 3D art design. The examination subjects are model production and material setting, light design, and animation production. The industry wants DCI to create new categories and new certificates that test core competence of other areas in digital content. This should also give students a clearer guideline of what the industry wants. It is also suggested that certificates from other countries, such as Japan’s DCAJ (Digital Content Association of Japan) Multimedia Producer certificate, be recognized in Taiwan.
4.6.2 Company-exclusive courses Many companies prefer in-house training instead of sending their employees to courses offered outside. The two main reasons are to protect industrial secret and to provide more direct training. DCI should cater to this need by offering courses that are exclusive to a company. Such an arrangement will also significantly reduce the overhead of personnel training in a company.
4.7 Source of teachings 4.7.1 Seed teachers To meet the human resource demand of the industry, DCI needs to ensure that there are enough qualified instructors to teach the courses. Thus it is imperative that DCI comes up with a mechanism to train seed teachers. The easiest way is to attract teaching faculty already in related departments in universities and colleges. In addition to teaching advancement and retraining courses, these teachers can also incorporate these courses into the regular curriculum and thus ensure a closer linkage between the academia and industry in the long term.
4.7.2 Dual instructorship An interesting concept emerged from our studies is dual instructorship. The industry often emphasizes putting hand-on experience into the courses offered. However, such courses can only be taught by people with experience in the industry. However, Taiwan has a rigid system in which it is almost impossible to hire a university faculty member without an advanced degree. Since few people with an advanced degree have extensive working experience in the digital content industry, it creates a catch-22 situation. To solve this problem, we propose a dual instructorship mechanism in which a university course is taught by coupling a regular faculty member with people from the industry. In addition to the advantage of combining theory and practice, it provides the additional benefit of a mutual exposure of the company and the students.
4.7.3 Incorporation of course material and teachers from abroad When planning DCI, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, through the Institute of Information Industries, did an extensive survey of educational programs abroad, notably the training institutes in Japan, Canada and Korea. They are good references for the development in Taiwan. It is therefore desirable to incorporate some of their courses, instructional methods and teachers into DCI. This should expedite the transfer of technologies and the training of teachers.
4.6 Course design: 4.6.1 Learning maps and course modules
5. CONCLUSIONS
It is important to design a learning map for each of the eight domains of the industry. In addition to giving an overview of the core expertise required in each domain, the learning map also serves as a road map for students and personnel alike to know their strength and shortcomings. Course modules can also be designed from the learning maps. This maximizes the efficiency in the design and offering of courses, and also provides the industry an opportunity to participate in the course design.
From the above findings we drew several conclusions, based on which we made a list of recommendations to the Digital Content Institute for consideration in their talent cultivation/training strategy. First, training should focus on the core job categories and expertise. The need of the supporting staff can be fulfilled by other means. Second, since the industry has focused their recruiting effort on people with a degree in a field related to the
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content industry, DCI should also focus training on bridging the gap between academia and industry so that the adaptation period can be cut to a minimum. Third, the shortage of high-level managers seems to be the biggest hurdle for the rapid growth of the industry at the moment. DCI should design a way of filling this need as soon as possible. Last but not least, designing the learning maps for the eight different sectors of industry seem to be the most urgent matter for DCI. A learning map gives a clear view of the human resource structure of each industrial sector, and shows what expertise a specific job variety requires. On one hand, it allows potential and existing workers to understand their learning path and to arrange their training program for advancement. On the other hand, it provides a educational guideline for the companies to plan and enhance their human resource development. Optimal course modules can also be designed according to the learning map. Only when the maps are completed can courses be offered effectively. We made our concrete recommendations to DCI according to two parameters: the skill level of the personnel and the time frame. We regard the immediate 1 to 3 years as short term and beyond that as medium to long term. We should again emphasize that the drawing of the learning maps should be considered a prerequisite for these actions. For the high level talent, it seems difficult to produce enough of them domestically for the short term need. Thus DCI should try to fill the short term need by designing mechanisms to help the industry attract talents from overseas and to send top prospects abroad to participate in large scale projects. In the meantime, DCI should commission top universities in Taiwan to create graduate programs in digital content management so that the managerial level people from the companies will have a chance to learn about new developments in the field and to learn the necessary skills in order to move up. When these programs become operative in two years, DCI could gradually transfer the responsibility of producing domestic top-level managers to these universities. In the meantime, DCI should continue to study market trends and provide feedback to these programs so that they can adapt and adjust quickly. The starting level personnel is another place where a close collaboration with the normal educational channel can be fruitful. In the short term DCI should design complete training courses for the core job categories of each industrial sector, introduce good training courses and programs from overseas, train seed instructors, and focus its effort on providing on-the-job training to shorten the time needed to put prospective and existing employees into the actual production line. In the meantime, DCI should come up with incentives to encourage universities and colleges to design academic programs that suit the need of the digital content industry. Such programs should aim at providing students with enough on-hand and interdisciplinary training so that they can be used by the industry immediately upon graduation. Once these university programs are established, DCI should put its long term goal at monitoring the progress of the programs and market trends, and help the universities make strategic adjustments according to the growth of the industry. The medium level manpower are mainly medium level managers that are promoted from within the company. This is the level that DCI can offer courses both in the short and long term. These courses, designed according to the learning maps, offer advancement training for the on-the-job people to sharpen up their
professional skills and move up the corporate ladder. Courses designed and commissioned by a specific company should also be offered. These courses are tailored for the company’s need and could be the best way to to fulfill the technological need of a company. Talent cultivation is essential to gain the edge on the digital content industry and is a crucial factor in its continuation. As the digital content industry rapidly grows, it is hoped that the establishment of the DCI can narrow the gap between the human resource required by the industry and man power provided by the educational institutions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study was commissioned by the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affair and the Institute of Information Industries. Additional support was provided by the National Science Foundation grant NSC 92-2422-h-002-009 and the staff of the Division of Applications and Services of the National Digital Archives Program. Their supports are greatly appreciated.
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