政府新闻
上海人大代表建言将实验室成果转化为市场化产品 2026-02-05
Deputies at the annual plenary session of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress have proposed a number of fixes to close the gap between breakthroughs in the laboratory and marketable products, calling for sound policy, funding, research and development, and industrial environments to support the process.A big engineering divide still separates prototypes from market-ready samples, said Wang Yanfeng, one of the deputies and executive dean of the artificial intelligence school at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The path from prototypes to commercial products remains obstructed, and coordination among industry, universities, research institutions, and end users has yet to mature, he added.
The market lacks the professional capabilities to take cutting-edge early-stage university results and advance them through in-depth engineering, Wang noted, leaving many innovations stalled at the theoretical or prototype stage.
Using AI as an example, Wang proposed a dedicated program for “proof-of-concept” and “pilot product testing.” The initiative would provide long-term, stable support to new-type research institutions such as computing institutes and industrial technology research centers, enabling systematic engineering development, reliability verification, and early-stage creation of “quasi-commercial” products with higher investment potential.
He also recommended developing more flexible, cross-institution hiring and talent mobility systems, along with intellectual property management frameworks and benefit-sharing models tailored to AI’s rapid innovation cycles. He emphasized improving incentive and evaluation mechanisms for personnel responsible for converting scientific results into marketable apps.
Local government departments should take the lead in supporting key businesses and universities in building joint labs run under a model of shared investment, joint operations, and shared achievements, said Liu Xuanyong, a deputy and dean of the College of Biological and Medical Engineering at Donghua University.
Real-World Grounding
Furthermore, Liu encouraged university research teams to leverage corporate incubators, pilot test bases, and production lines as extended research facilities. This approach would not only alleviate limited space and equipment at universities but also ground scientific research in real-world industrial production.
He also proposed advancing project-based teaching reforms that use real technical issues at firms as a starting point, breaking engineering problems into undergraduate graduation projects. Outcomes from students’ problem-solving processes, including industrial practice reports, technical research plans, and innovative product prototypes, could replace traditional thesis-based degree evaluations.
Top incubator practitioners must be interdisciplinary talents, including being technically skilled, commercially savvy, and capable of efficiently connecting industrial, investment, and expert ecosystems, said Han Wei, another deputy and chairwoman of TusStar, a leading Chinese sci-tech incubator.
She called for beefed up training of high-caliber incubator practitioners by granting access to government-led training resources such as Frontier Deployment Engineer and AI One-Person Company programs exclusively for incubator staff, giving them a clear career pathway and growth prospects.
She further recommended enhancing the social recognition and prestige of incubator professionals to attract elite talent into the sci-tech services sector, enabling incubators to evolve into “super connectors” of global high-end innovation resources.
Shanghai’s total R&D investment intensity was around 4.5 percent last year, with basic research accounting for about 12 percent of total R&D spending, according to the 2025 Shanghai Sci-Tech Progress Report, which was compiled under the leadership of the Shanghai Municipal Sci-Tech Commission and released during the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress.
The report also showed that Shanghai’s technology contracts rose 25 percent to CNY649.7 billion (USD90.2 billion) in 2025. High-value invention patents reached 65 per 10,000 people, and Patent Cooperation Treaty applications totaled 7,446, up 12 percent and 9.1 percent, respectively.
Source: Yicai Global
