(Yicai) Feb. 5 -- Improving and facilitating the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, as well as creating a favorable policy, research and development, and industrial ecosystem in support, was one of the key discussion topics among deputies at the ongoing session of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress.

There is still a big engineering gap between scientific research prototypes and market-ready samples, said Wang Yanfeng, deputy to the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress and executive dean of the School of Artificial Intelligence at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The pathway from samples to commercial products remains obstructed, and the coordination mechanism among the industry, universities, research institutes, and end-users is yet to fully mature, he added.

The market still lacks professional capabilities to take over cutting-edge early-stage achievements from universities and conduct in-depth engineering development, leaving a large volume of innovations stuck at the theory or prototype stage, Wang noted.

Taking AI as an example, Wang proposed launching a special program for ‘proof-of-concept’ and ‘product pilot testing’ to provide long-term, stable support for new-type research institutions, such as computing institutes and industrial technology research institutes, enabling systematic engineering development and reliability verification of promising frontier achievements from universities to generate ‘quasi-commercial products’ with higher investment value at an early stage.

Moreover, Wang suggested exploring the establishment of a more relaxed and flexible mechanism for cross-institutional talent recruitment and mobility, an intellectual property management system, and a benefit-sharing model suitable for the rapid iteration of AI.

Wang also called for improvements to the incentive and evaluation systems for key talent involved in the transformation of sci-tech research achievements.

Relevant municipal government departments should take the lead in supporting enterprises in key industries and universities to build laboratories that operate under a model of joint investment, joint operations, and shared achievements, said Liu Xuanyong, deputy to the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress and dean of the College of Biological and Medical Engineering at Donghua University.

Liu also encouraged university research teams to use corporate incubators, pilot test bases, and production lines as extended research facilities to not only tackle the issue of limited space and equipment in universities but also to align scientific research more closely with real industrial production scenarios.

Advanced project-based teaching reforms should be advanced, taking real technical problems from enterprises as the starting point and breaking down related engineering issues into graduation projects for undergraduate students, according to Liu.

Moreover, Liu suggested that traditional evaluation for degree thesis be replaced with outcomes from students’ problem-solving processes, such as industrial practice reports, key technical research plans, and innovative product prototypes.

Outstanding incubator practitioners must be interdisciplinary talents mastering technology and business, possessing strong networking and resource integration capabilities, and efficiently connecting industrial, investment, and expert ecosystems, said Han Wei, deputy to the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress and chairwoman of Chinese sci-tech innovation incubation platform TusStar.

Han suggested strengthening the training of high-caliber incubator practitioners by opening government-led special training resources, such as Frontier Deployment Engineer and AI One-Person Company programs, exclusively to incubator professionals to give them a clear career growth path and promising prospects.

Moreover, the social recognition and prestige of incubator practitioners should be enhanced to attract top talents to the sci-tech service sector, enabling incubators to truly transform into ‘super connectors’ of high-end global innovation resources, according to Han.

Shanghai’s overall R&D investment intensity was around 4.5 percent last year, with basic research accounting for about 12 percent of total R&D investment, 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 volume of technology contracts in Shanghai rose 25 percent to CNY649.7 billion (USD90.2 billion) last year from 2024, according to the report. The number of high-value invention patents per 10,000 people was 65, and Patent Cooperation Treaty patent applications reached 7,446, up 12 percent and 9.1 percent, respectively, in the period.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione