Only making wedding clothes for others? Behind it is actually a game of chess, with Shanghai state-owned enterprises investing billions of dollars in enterprises | Shanghai | Wedding Clothes

After studying and working abroad for more than 20 years, Dr. Guan Yimin decided to return to China in 2016 to start a business and establish a MEMS sensor design company.

"But the chef lacks a kitchen," said Guan Yimin. The so-called "kitchen" refers to the factory that produces products for him. Whether or not to solve the "kitchen" problem is related to the success or failure of Guan Yimin's entrepreneurship, or more precisely, without a "kitchen", his entrepreneurship would be impossible to talk about.

In the end, of course, this "kitchen" was there, and then there was the story that followed.This is a story of collaborative innovation between state-owned assets and private enterprises in Shanghai.

Building a functional platform

The field of research by Guan Yimin is called MEMS sensors, which is one of the applications of integrated circuits. In today's field of integrated circuits, production and design are separate. The wafer factories responsible for production, including TSMC and SMIC, have a huge construction cost and a small quantity. And there are countless design companies, from well-known companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and Qualcomm, to Aorui Technology founded by Guan Yimin. But many startups like Aorui Technology find it difficult to find large foundries to test and produce for them due to their small orders and special processes.

The difficulties faced by Aorui Technology cannot be solved solely by private capital, as a pilot line for integrated circuits often requires investments of billions of yuan and it is difficult to recover costs in the short term. Shanghai state-owned assets have decided to fill this gap. In 2017, Shanghai Microtechnology Industry Research Institute, a state-owned new research and development institution, built the first 8-inch "Beyond Mole" R&D pilot line in China, providing research and development, pilot testing, and verification services for sensor design companies.

After hearing about this research and development pilot line, Guan Yimin decided to resign from his job in the United States and return to China alone to start his own business. With this R&D pilot line, his designs on paper can be transformed into products, and "recipes" can become "dishes". Dong Yemin, Executive Vice General Manager of the Industrial Research Institute, said, "So far, we have received orders from more than 700 enterprises. At the same time, we have also incubated more than ten startups, with a total valuation of 10 billion yuan."

Shanghai Microtechnology Industry Research Institute's "Beyond Mole" 8-inch R&D Pilot Line

The Industrial Research Institute and its R&D pilot line are the achievements of Shanghai in recent years in creating a functional platform for research and transformation. Functional platforms are oriented towards major technological strategic projects and engineering implementation needs, providing fundamental support for the research and transformation of new technologies, processes, and products. Some foreign scholars compare natural ecosystems and refer to functional platforms as "industrial commons", which are a collection of key capabilities that can support industry development. They believe that only by revitalizing industrial commons can industrial innovation and development be achieved.

Functional platforms have a common feature: government led. On the one hand, functional platforms require huge investment, which small and medium-sized enterprises are unable to afford; On the other hand, it can provide "common technologies" to promote the innovative development of the entire industry. These platforms with public hub attributes cannot do without the guidance of the government.

As of now, Shanghai has established 15 functional platforms, focusing on key areas such as integrated circuits, biopharmaceuticals, intelligent manufacturing, next-generation information technology, new materials, and new energy, driving industrial output value to over 10 billion yuan. In addition to the Industrial Research Institute, some other functional platforms have also achieved good results. Nearly 10 new material pilot production lines have been established on the graphene industry technology functional platform, and the Shanghai Supercarbon Technology Incubator, which belongs to the platform, has attracted more than 100 enterprises to settle in. The intelligent manufacturing R&D and transformation functional platform has successively cultivated, transformed, and introduced 23 landing technology enterprises, including 8 high-tech enterprises.

In Jiading, since its establishment 10 years ago, the Industrial Research Institute has driven the development of the Shanghai Intelligent Sensor Industrial Park located in Jiading, and many semiconductor companies have landed in Jiading. Aorui Technology, born on the basis of the Industrial Research Institute, has completed its third round of financing. Founder Guan Yimin's next goal is for the company to go public on the Science and Technology Innovation Board within three years.

Incubate external forces

If "industrial commons" emphasize an open ecosystem, then another model of collaborative innovation between state-owned assets and private enterprises - innovation incubation - deepens the relationship between the two. This is more like a "one-on-one" service, where state-owned assets need to help enterprises transform their concepts into samples, and then turn samples into products, until eggs become lively chickens.

The recently released "Implementation Plan for Cultivating High Quality Incubators in Shanghai" also mentioned that Shanghai encourages state-owned enterprises to actively invest in innovative resources such as land, funds, facilities, and application scenarios, and participate in the construction of high-quality incubators and innovation and entrepreneurship clusters.

Liu Junling, a professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, is also the founder of Shanghai Xunyao Biotechnology Co., Ltd. Xunyao Bio is the first innovative drug research and development technology company hatched by Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group, a state-owned enterprise in Shanghai. Its research and development of a Firstinclass antibody drug for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis has entered the clinical research application stage.

Liu Junling said, "Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group can help companies share risks, which is why we have the courage to try to cross the 'valley of death' of drugs from molecular discovery to clinical research."

In the biopharmaceutical industry, the development of new drugs is a lengthy process. Researchers need to select suitable molecules from thousands of candidate compounds, and the development cycle of a new drug can last for several decades, with research and development costs exceeding $1 billion.

Among them, the most critical stage is the clinical validation stage, which is also the stage that burns the most money. R&D expenses account for 70% or even more of the total, which has become an unbearable burden for many research teams.

Last year, Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group led the establishment of a cutting-edge biopharmaceutical industry innovation center, hoping to find more grassroots teams like Liu Junling to promote innovation in the ivory tower to the market.

Shanghai Biopharmaceutical Frontier Industry Innovation Center

Zuo Min, Chairman of the Shanghai Biomedical Frontier Industry Innovation Center, stated that the center fully utilizes the strong basic scientific research achievements of Fudan University and Jiaotong University School of Medicine, as well as new clinical needs from affiliated hospitals. By building an incubation acceleration platform, it connects Shanghai Pharmaceutical's powerful industrial transformation resources, produces original new drugs in China, and jointly promotes the innovative development of China's biopharmaceuticals.

"By collaborating with universities, research and development platforms owned by Shanghai Pharmaceuticals, and industrial chain systems, we aim to build incubators to serve early research projects and create a starting point for innovation and entrepreneurship for scientists in the vicinity," said Zuo Min.

Building a Bridge of Cooperation

In the ecosystem of industries, the ultimate goal is to form a "tropical rainforest", and enterprises of different stages and attributes are members of this rainforest. Large, medium, and small enterprises do not exist in isolation, but are integrated and developed, which is the only way for such an ecosystem to have vitality. Therefore, state-owned assets not only need to be gardeners who build platforms and transport nutrients, but also need to become "guides", bridging the way for private enterprises, and driving the aggregation of upstream and downstream innovation entities and resource elements.

Lingang Group is a state-owned enterprise in Shanghai that focuses on park development, enterprise services, and industrial investment. Recently, Lingang Group joined forces with Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Minhang District Government, and Huawei Shengsi Open Source Community to launch the Shanghai Shengsi Innovation Center, building a bridge for AI related enterprises to cooperate with industry leaders.

As a universal technology, AI can empower thousands of industries, leading technological revolution and industrial transformation. "There are many chip companies in Shanghai that can provide basic support for AI, and the application scenarios of artificial intelligence in Shanghai are very rich, incubating various innovative algorithm models. Starting from Shanghai, a radiation effect can be formed nationwide," said Yang Hao, Vice President of Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Research Institute.

Shengsi Innovation Center will settle in Caohejing Technology Oasis, a subsidiary of Lingang Group

The Shengsi Innovation Center takes the domestically produced AI framework Shengsi MindSpore as its main focus, benchmarking Google TensorFlow and Facebook PyTorch, building an independent and controllable open-source AI framework and open-source ecosystem, and creating a Chinese artificial intelligence infrastructure operating system.

At present, the first batch of 22 units, including COMAC Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Yuncong Technology, and Biren Technology, have settled in the innovation center, and will cooperate with Huawei Shengsi to carry out large-scale model innovation and AI industry university research transformation, and jointly promote the high-quality development of AI industry ecology.

Sun Bin, Director of Huawei's Shengsi Ecological Development, introduced that focusing on key areas such as AI computing power ecology, scientific intelligence, big models, and intelligent terminals, Shengsi Innovation Center will cooperate with leading enterprises in emerging industrial systems such as COMAC to improve big model training. At the same time, it also provides professional technical services for growing small and medium-sized enterprises, cultivates a batch of artificial intelligence application products, and strongly supports the construction of specialized, refined, new, and innovative industrial clusters.

"The future competition is technological competition, and the key lies in the innovation and agglomeration of cutting-edge industries." said Weng Wei, Deputy Chief Economist of Lingang Group and Chairman of Lingang Science and Technology Investment Company. Lingang Group is focusing on gathering first-class talents and integrating all factor resources to improve the ecological environment of technological innovation and industrial development, increase support for factors such as technology, talent, and capital, and connect the chain from transformation, incubation to industrialization.