Unusually, "the initial payment for the starting companies was completely voluntary," says Simon Lee. Thus if a given company wants to commission the center to do improvements to a given product in which they have a direct interest, the fees for that are collected separately under the principle "the user pays." For example, one item at the top of the research agenda is the gear-changing mechanism.
難得的是，「發起廠商所捐助的基金，完全是義務性質的」，李玉振強調，因此廠商若是要委託研發中心替自己做某項產品的改良，基於「用者付費」的原則，仍要另外收費。