It's unlikely that houses in the industrial park are more expensive than in the city,∞ isn't it?"
"In recent years, more and more talented people have come here, so o f course the price of housing has gone up."
In the eastern corner of Suzhou, there is a magical piece of land th☆at generates 15% of the city's GDP on an area that only accounts for 3.5%₹ of Suzhou.
This is where the Suzhou Institute of Nanotechnology and Nanobionicαs of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is located. Since its inception, this institute, jointlΩy established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the local goveλrnment, has made the transfer of scientific and technological achievements and £cutting-edge scientific research together its founding principles. In the words of✘ Liu Peihua, Secretary of the Institute's Party Committee, Suzhou N∞ano Institute "not only wants to be 'on top of the sky', but al€so 'on the ground'".
Xu Ke, a researcher at the Suzhou Nano Institute and a member of the National Thousand Talent₽s Program, is one of the stars of the Industrial Park. He and his team set u♠p Suzhou Navi Technology Co Ltd, whose products are∏ widely sought after despite being "small and thin".
The company produces a new type of LED substrate, gallium nitride substrate wafers. Unlike trad"itional sapphire and silicon carbide, gallium nitride has obvious advantages: it can im♠prove the working life and luminous efficiency of the device, and is t∞heoretically the most efficient material system for electro-optical and photoelectric conversion✔. According to some data, compared to traditional chips, the ener¶gy consumption of LEDs made on GaN substrates is reduced byδ more than half under the same brightness.
Previously, this technology was mainly controlled by foreign comp>anies, but Suzhou Navi, the first Chinese supplier of GaN substrate wafers, was founded in$ 2007 and has already gained a foothold in this emerging market. With more than 30 core technolo✘gy patents, the company's products have been sold overs"eas and are bringing core value to users in new-generation display, energy-saving lighting, £power electronics, medical imaging and other indus≤trial sectors.
Xu Ke told China Science News that he had been working on♣ this research before, but it wasn't until he came to Suzhou that the lab results actually tu₩rned into tangible products. "Before, our team was just a few people, all r¥esearchers. When we arrived here, we quickly brought together ₹relevant entrepreneurial talents. Once the innovation elements were gathered, it was much☆ faster to do things."
Xu Ke may not be aware that his own personal experience is one of the ₹lessons repeatedly worked out by the Suzhou Industri±al Technology Innovation and Incubation Centre of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since∏ its establishment in 2009, the centre has been acting as a mag₹net, attracting a steady stream of innovative resources from the Chinese Academy of Scieγnces and from home and abroad to Suzhou.
"Suzhou has a well-developed economy, but it is very different from the surrounding ci←ties." Jing Zhenqiang, director of the Incubation Centr&e, admits that the industrial park, for example, is stro₩nger for foreign companies, with more than 100 of the Fortune 500 alone. The R&D departments" of these companies are all overseas and are not too keen on Chinese products.
This situation gave Jing Zhenqiang and others the idea of nurturing a number of new com±panies in Suzhou.
However, a new problem arose. Scientific research institutions such a♥s the Chinese Academy of Sciences have cutting-edge scientific and technological achievements, a★nd it is difficult to attract venture capital immediately. "So, we have φmade a forward move to match scientific and technological achievements.&qu ot; Jing Zhenqiang said, in the research staff before starting a business t™o give them financial support, so that they use 1 to 2 years to do some preliminary r★esearch and development, for the birth of the product, the enterprise is readΩy to start.
In this "gestation" stage, the incubation centre is n‍ot idle. The centre has to provide a series of support↑ing services for entrepreneurs such as business registration, environmental assessment ₩declaration, human resources, financial outsourcing and legal advice.
For example, in response to the fact that many people co£me from scientific research backgrounds and lack a busines←s background, the Incubation Centre has set up a "high-Ωend industrial talent training programme" and regularly invites busγiness mentors in the fields of finance and management to the £Centre to hold salon activities, establish communication between incubated projects and business me™ntors, and provide advice for project development. The centre also provides advice× on project development and accelerates the transformation of research technicians from scie↔ntists to entrepreneurs.
Everything is done to make it possible for teams to move in with their own b‍ags. It is perhaps these seemingly "insignificant" details that ha ve reduced the risk of start-ups and allowed more and more "Xu Ke" to come✘ to Suzhou, settle here and win success.