How to become a "nuclear explosion point" for technological innovation?, The "Wuning Innovation Community" with multiple innate advantages
Wuning Road in Putuo District is located at the entrance of the G2 and G42 expressways in Shanghai, and is a land transportation hub connecting the Yangtze River Delta. It gathers a group of universities and technology-based enterprises, making it the area with the highest innovation concentration in Putuo District. In April this year, Putuo initiated the establishment of the "Wuning Innovation Community", focusing on "large universities and famous enterprises" along the Wuning Road, and leveraging the agglomeration effect of scientific and technological innovation strategies. How to build the Wuning Innovation Community into a "nuclear explosion point" for scientific and technological innovation in the central urban area is an important issue for Putuo District to integrate and amplify the technological and industrial innovation resources of the entire district, and deeply integrate into the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta.
On September 22, 2023, the Suzhou River Forum was held in Putuo. The theme of this forum is "Construction of Wuning Innovation Community and Industrial Innovation Highland". Based on the science and technology innovation resources and industrial foundation of Putuo District, experts and scholars are invited to focus on proposing ideas and suggestions for high-level construction of Wuning Innovation Community.
Deeply cultivate the "community" of industry, academia, and research
Unleash enormous potential for scientific and technological innovation
The Suzhou River Forum has been successfully held for 17 years and has become an important negotiation platform in Putuo District. On that day, the forum was jointly organized by the Putuo District Political Consultative Conference and the Municipal Political Consultative Conference Boundary and Regional Work Committee. At the meeting, the research results of the key topics of the Putuo District Political Consultative Conference in 2023 were first released. The report points out that building an innovation community in Wuning can effectively combine Putuo's technological innovation layout with urban functional layout, create an "ecosystem" where various innovative resources, elements, and entities converge and integrate, and promote industrial innovation and upgrading in Putuo District through technological innovation, achieving high-quality development.
The academic community usually regards the "innovation community" as a joint innovation organization that accelerates the transformation of "knowledge" to "productivity". To some extent, this coincides with Zhang Huiming, Vice Dean of the Yangtze River Delta Research Institute and Director of the Enterprise Research Institute at Fudan University, who proposed "technology alliance capabilities" at the forum. He said that if a company independently undertakes technological innovation in a particular field, the cost is too high. Currently, most of the cutting-edge technological breakthroughs are completed through enterprise alliances. "The form of community helps enterprises accumulate strength and diversify risks in the process of technological innovation."
However, according to the report, there are still several bottleneck issues in the development of the Wuning Innovation Community at present. For example, the traditional industries in the Wuning region are mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, while there are not many leading technology enterprises with innovation driving force, industry influence, industry radiation, and market and resource control. It is difficult to form industrial agglomeration effects without the formation and role of "chain master" enterprises.
Therefore, the report suggests that the Wuning Innovation Community can strengthen its innovation cooperation platform, explore and support universities and institutions to establish joint laboratories and concept verification centers, ensure that the innovation process is not only oriented towards industrial needs, but also low-cost utilization of industrial resources, create a platform for low-cost communication between industry and research, and low-cost trial and error for enterprises, so as to enable the transformation of scientific and technological achievements out of the "valley of death".
At the forum, Zheng Junqi, Vice President of Shanghai Electric Appliance Science Research Institute Co., Ltd. and Chairman of Shanghai Robotics Industry Technology Research Institute, also regarded Japan's ultra large scale integrated circuit projects as a typical case of the flourishing development of innovation communities. According to him, the project collaborates with five key companies including Hitachi and Mitsubishi, as well as affiliated laboratories such as the Institute of Electronics at the Japan Institute of Industrial Technology, to gather top research talents from across the country. With the joint efforts of enterprises, governments, and universities, the project has produced over 1000 integrated circuit related patents and technologies within three years of its establishment, surpassing the technology of the United States and making Japan the world's largest semiconductor producer.
In addition, in response to the report pointing out that the current Wuning Innovation Community has insufficient matching between the direction of science and technology innovation and key industries, difficulty in directly transforming "technological value" into "market value", poor circulation of factors between various parks and research institutes, low allocation efficiency, and difficulty in integrating into the overall production system and innovation ecology of the region. Pu Goguang, General Manager of Shanghai Industrial Control Safety Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. and Executive Dean of the School of Software Engineering at East China Normal University, proposed the industry university research integration model at the forum, which can be considered as a solution.
Pugoguang stated that the improvement of industrial competitiveness cannot be separated from technological innovation, and the element of "people" is crucial to innovation. Therefore, Shanghai Industrial Control Safety Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. has established long-term cooperation with software engineering colleges of various universities in Shanghai. By establishing platforms such as "postdoctoral workstations" and academician expert workstations in the company, it breaks the geographical restrictions on talent attraction, attracts a group of "migratory" talents, focuses on industrial difficulties, builds science and technology innovation platforms, and develops original innovation capabilities from 0 to 1, accelerating the transformation of achievements from "1 to infinity".
Give full play to the advantages of "main roads"
Deeply integrating and developing with the Yangtze River Delta
On the forum, He Jianhua, a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and director of the Yangtze River Delta Modernization Research Institute at Nantong University, made a vivid metaphor - if you stand at the head of the Wuning Bridge and look at the southern part of Jiangsu, you can see the traditional development axis of the Yangtze River Delta - the industrial star cities along the Shanghai Nanjing Line are strung together like a pearl necklace, full of innovative vitality and development potential.
In his view, the Yangtze River Delta, as one of the regions with abundant high-quality resources and prominent comprehensive advantages in scientific and technological innovation in China, has advantages such as abundant talent resources, numerous manufacturing star cities, a large number of various types of enterprises, extremely high concentration of financial capital, excellent business environment and policy support effects.
"As the 'main road' connecting the central urban area of Shanghai center and the Yangtze River Delta, Wuning Road can effectively connect with the Shanghai Nanjing Industrial Innovation Belt by virtue of its geographical advantages, clustered scientific and technological innovation resources and distinctive industrial characteristics, provide intellectual support and achievements transformation for technology and industrial innovation in southern Jiangsu, deeply integrate into the innovation ecosystem in southern Jiangsu, and become the highland of industrial innovation in the Yangtze River Delta," He Jianhua said.
The report released at the forum also suggests that based on the development strategy of industrial integration in the Yangtze River Delta, the Wuning Innovation Community can connect with innovation resources in the Yangtze River Delta, carry out industrial collaborative innovation, and create innovative enterprise headquarters and high-tech industry clusters; Relying on the transportation advantages of Wuning Road, attracting information flow, capital flow, human flow, and technology flow from the Yangtze River Delta, promoting the landing of high-quality industrial projects and innovative enterprises. At the same time, high-tech industrial parks such as Shanghai Tiandi Software Park and Wuning Science and Technology Park can also adopt methods such as "park integration", "multiple parks in one area", and "joint park construction" to create an open innovation ecosystem with cross regional linkage in the Yangtze River Delta.
As a member enterprise of the Wuning Science and Technology Innovation Community, Zheng Junqi has a deep understanding of this. According to him, last year, Shanghai Electric Appliance Science Research Institute Co., Ltd. collaborated with six science and technology innovation entities in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui and other regions to establish the "Yangtze River Delta Robot Industry Platform Innovation Alliance". Through the alliance's basic components and collaborations with several universities in the Yangtze River Delta, achievements have been achieved in the field of robot automatic navigation chips, and the future plans to form a globally competitive innovation highland in the robot industry. "The Yangtze River Delta region connects millions of enterprises and practitioners, solving pain points and difficulties in production, education, research, finance, and utilization for the development of enterprises."