The innovation chain is the daring leap from 0 to 1; the industrial chain is the meticulous replication from 1 to 100,000.

How can we build a "bridge of conversion" so that the laboratory’s high-quality outputs can be precisely embedded into the industry’s framework, breaking the dilemma of the two "gazing at each other but hard to meet"? This is the core question Anhui must solve to cultivate new-quality productive forces.

Breaking the mechanism ice: stimulate conversion momentum through empowerment reform

The commercialization of scientific and technological achievements is not a single-step breakthrough but a systemic project involving multiple stakeholders; it requires robust mechanisms to ensure researchers have the motivation and confidence to participate.

To lift researchers’ worries and move research outputs from the "bookshelf" to the "shelf" for sale, Anhui has launched a reform to confer rights over institution-related scientific and technological achievements.

Responding to this, Anhui University introduced a policy under which equity or investment shares acquired by valuing the technology are distributed with 80% to the researchers and 20% to the university, together with corresponding responsibilities. This policy greatly ignited researchers’ entrepreneurial enthusiasm.

The empowerment reform not only stimulated researchers’ initiative but also accelerated the realization of research outcomes.

The teams led by Wang Yongzhong and Jin Xiaofeng successfully partnered with Anhui Iprocom Biotech Co., Ltd., exploring a "universities and institutes + leading enterprises" cooperation model—research teams focus on technology R&D and product upgrades while enterprises concentrate on company operations, market promotion, and sales—achieving complementary advantages.

As the empowerment reform deepened, wave after wave of research outputs moved from the lab to application scenarios. So far, the province has granted rights to 1,846 institution-related scientific and technological achievements with a total valuation of RMB 812 million.

Matching supply and demand: open the integration bottleneck through precise alignment

Patent certificates pile up in laboratories while production lines struggle with persistent technical bottlenecks. The disconnect between technological innovation and industrial development is a key obstacle to high-quality progress.

The head of the Transformation Promotion Division said bluntly: "Research in universities and institutes is often guided by theoretical exploration, papers, and patents; projects driven by enterprise needs account for a relatively small share, so results often do not sufficiently match industrial demand—precise supply-demand matching is a problem."

This mismatch is the major barrier blocking the deep integration of the innovation chain and the industrial chain.

"In the past research was done 'behind closed doors'—many papers were published, but few results landed. Now we follow enterprise needs, and every lab breakthrough targets production challenges," said Professor He Yunhan of Hefei University of Technology (HFUT).

HFUT's mechanism of "enterprises pose problems, government sets topics, universities solve problems, and the market evaluates the results" for collaboration among government, industry, academia, and research has become a golden key to solve the supply-demand mismatch. Focusing on Anhui’s low-altitude economy needs, He Yunhan’s team developed the multi-rotor eVTOL 'Lingyue No.1,' which completed its test flight, and the next-generation logistics drone 'Lingyue No.2' is about to debut—achieving synchronous resonance between research and industry.

"The core of the HFUT model is to ensure scientific outputs no longer 'lie' in the lab," said HFUT president Wang Meng. Since the 14th Five-Year Plan, the university’s industry-funded contract projects have totaled over RMB 2.09 billion, ranking first among universities in Anhui for technology transfer contract value for consecutive years—demonstrating strong technological service capacity.

The Transformation Promotion Division suggested that in the future, universities and research institutes could further establish normalized channels for technology demand matching with central enterprises and leading local firms.

Platform foundation: use full-chain support to cross the "valley of death"

From microscopic lab samples to qualified products on the production line, the concept-validation "initial screening," pilot-scale maturation "tempering," and scenario trials "field testing" are necessary steps for research outputs to cross the "valley of death." Data show that projects without pilot testing have an industrialization success rate under 30%; after pilot-scale tempering, that rate can jump to 80%.

Since 2022, Anhui has focused on this critical link and, through a series of policy supports, has actively promoted the construction of pilot-scale conversion bases for research commercialization, drawing a construction-plan style guidance to lay out a route map for building them.

"New energy vehicles and intelligent connected vehicle technologies iterate fast, require large R&D investments, and demand high standards for engineering validation. Many excellent lab outputs cannot enter industrialization because of a lack of pilot-test platforms and engineering capabilities," said Li Zhongyuan, a research project manager in the Platform Construction Department of the CAS Hefei Technology Innovation Engineering Institute. Through pilot testing and optimization, technologies’ maturity, reliability, and market recognition are significantly improved, making them easier to attract industrial capital, secure customer orders, and realize value leap.

After years of cultivation, Anhui’s pilot bases have begun to show results. So far, 38 provincial-level pilot conversion bases have been filed; in 2024 they served enterprises, universities, and institutes over 10,000 times and produced nearly 400 new products, technologies, and pieces of equipment.

"We will plan and build a group of high-level pilot bases for technology conversion, concept verification centers, and top incubators to fill key gaps in the full chain of commercialization. At the same time, we will improve the operation efficiency of Anhui’s science-and-technology marketplace, strengthen the role of 'city partners,' and promote in-depth supply-demand matching," said the Transformation Promotion Division leader.

As a key platform to promote commercialization and help industrial upgrading, the Anhui Innovation Pavilion will construct a province-wide, city-county three-tier linked Anhui Science and Technology Big Market.

"City partners" will build city-level sub-markets with a unified brand standard, bringing full-chain services for "finding technology, finding capital, finding cooperation" to enterprises’ doorsteps, bridging industry–academia–research collaboration, and turning laboratory patents into production-line products—allowing more innovation fruits to ripen across Jianghuai land.

When more lab outputs cross the "valley of death" to production lines, when more research topics are anchored to industrial pain points, and when more innovation resources and industrial demand are precisely coupled, Anhui’s innovation chain and industrial chain will finally bridge their "gazing-across-the-river" distance and usher in a true mutual rush toward each other.