Empowerment through Science and Innovation, Win-Win Cooperation: The Grand Final of Wuxi's First Urban Science and Innovation Partner Competition Successfully Concludes

On October 10, the finals and award ceremony of Wuxi's first Urban Science and Innovation Partner Competition, as well as the 2026 Jiangsu Province Technology Manager Competition (Wuxi Division), were successfully held at the Yangtze River Delta Industrial Core Valley. Co-hosted by Wuxi Science and Technology Bureau in conjunction with Wuxi High-tech Zone, Jiangyin High-tech Zone, Yixing Environmental Protection Science and Technology Industrial Park, Huishan High-tech Zone and Binhu High-tech Zone, this event gathers resources from scientific research, industry, finance, service intermediaries and other parties, builds a practical competition and resource docking platform for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, and effectively promotes the deep coupling and precise matching of scientific research supply, industrial demand and capital elements.

With the theme of "Empowering through Science and Innovation, Winning Together as Partners", the competition sets up two competition categories: technology transfer service and business incubation. It selects high-quality technology managers and science and innovation teams across the country, gathers resources through competitions, improves capabilities through competitions, and cultivates driving forces through transformation, so as to accelerate the promotion of innovative achievements out of laboratories, onto production lines and into the large market. Since its launch in April this year, the competition has radiated to many places inside and outside the province such as Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Nanjing and Suzhou, and has received a total of 156 valid registrations, including 75 participants in the technology transfer service group and 81 teams in the business incubation group. The participating entities cover university technology transfer departments, socialized technology transfer institutions, new R&D institutions, science and innovation enterprises, venture capital institutions and independent technology managers. Closely following the development needs of Wuxi's "465" modern industrial cluster and focusing on the pilot construction of the province's "dual-high coordination", the competition opens up two-way demand lists for the government and enterprises, and has successively held three special industrial competitions in Jiangyin High-tech Zone, Wuxi High-tech Zone and Yixing Environmental Protection Science and Technology Park, covering key industrial tracks in Wuxi such as embodied intelligence, biomedicine, commercial aerospace, photonic chips and new energy. A total of 114 high-quality projects competed on stage, 36 of which are key docking projects for "dual-high coordination".

The finals have carefully designed competition links of classified evaluation and close to actual combat: 16 promoted contestants in the technology transfer service group competed in three rounds of road show defense, knowledge Q&A and scenario simulation, to comprehensively test their professional qualities such as technology research and judgment, demand mining, implementation promotion, business docking, compliance and risk control; 14 final teams in the business incubation group carried out project road show competitions simultaneously around dimensions such as technology maturity, market growth, industrial adaptability and implementation feasibility. After a full day of rigorous review and fierce competition, the gold, silver, bronze and excellent awards of all competition categories were announced.

Zhang Hui, Second-level Researcher of the Regional Innovation and Achievement Transformation Department of Jiangsu Provincial Department of Science and Technology, Dai Lixin, Director of Jiangsu Science and Technology Resources Coordination Service Center, Xiao Ying, General Manager of Jiangsu Technology Trading Market, and other relevant persons in charge of provincial units came to the event for guidance. Zhao Jianping, Deputy Secretary of the Wuxi Municipal Party Committee, Pan Binbin, Director of Wuxi Science and Technology Bureau, Hu Yidong, Dean of Wuxi Industrial Innovation Research Institute, Kuang Hui, Deputy Party Secretary of Wuxi University, and other leading officials of relevant departments and units attended the event and jointly presented awards to the winning contestants and teams.

Pan Binbin, Director of Wuxi Science and Technology Bureau, said in his speech that at present, regional scientific and technological innovation presents a pattern of hundreds of boats vying for the current, with competition and cooperation intertwined. The competition of urban science and innovation has shifted from the competition of competing for policies and grabbing projects to the in-depth competition of building ecosystems, cultivating partners and gathering joint forces. In recent years, Wuxi has continued to focus on the construction of a full-chain scientific and technological achievement transformation system, and earlier introduced the special "12 policies" for full-chain scientific and technological achievement transformation in the province, implemented the system of university-based technology managers and project managers, deployed and landed 41 new R&D institutions, 25 university technology transfer institutions, 11 concept verification centers, and 6 pilot-scale service platforms. It has 14 provincial-level benchmark incubators and 17 Ministry of Industry and Information Technology certified technology-based enterprise incubators, building a complete innovation chain of "source innovation - concept verification - pilot incubation - industrial implementation". The development of Wuxi's "465" modern industrial cluster provides broad development space for technology managers to carry out achievement transformation and for science and innovation teams to start businesses. Wuxi will continue to gather talents, attract projects, temper teams and build brands through competitions, continuously gather high-level technology managers and hard-core science and innovation teams, activate the talent pool for achievement transformation, precisely attract a number of highly mature hard technology projects to land and empower industrial upgrading, systematically train a professional and specialized technology transfer service team, continuously polish the city's science and innovation brand, and amplify the radiation and agglomeration effect of the Yangtze River Delta science and innovation node city.

This event simultaneously carried out a number of science and innovation empowerment initiatives: typical excellent technology transfer cases of Wuxi Technology Manager College were released on site, Wuxi's university-based technology managers were appointed, and the technology manager point system was promoted; 15 high-quality projects were signed and settled intensively, covering cutting-edge fields such as photonic chips, MEMS probe cards, robot joint modules, bionic dexterous hands, special carbon fluoride batteries, food for special medical purposes, and silicon-based pastures. In addition, China Merchants Bank and Bank of Jiangsu cooperated with key science and innovation and industrial parks in Wuxi to sign a special credit cooperation agreement for "dual-high coordination", so as to accurately support the whole process of scientific and technological achievement transformation with financial resources. During the competition, relying on the professional service capabilities of the participating technology managers, a total of 75 scientific and technological achievements were docked and settled, the total value of technology transactions reached 85 million yuan, 16 compound high-level technology transfer backbones were selected and cultivated, and the urban "science and innovation partner" ecosystem took shape at an accelerated pace.

In the next step, Wuxi will further improve the full-chain cultivation mechanism for science and innovation partners of "selection - empowerment - actual combat - appointment - points - landing", continue to deepen the construction of the technology manager team and competition activities, refine and select replicable and promotable typical cases of scientific and technological achievement transformation, and contribute more "Wuxi strength" to the improvement of the province's technology transfer service system, the cultivation and expansion of new quality productive forces, and the promotion of high-quality industrial science and innovation development.