HANGZHOU, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- Holding up a small vial of fine white powder, Su Hongjiu said it took his company only 14 months to turn a laboratory sample of the ultrapure nanosilica abrasive, a key chip-polishing consumable, into China's first mass-produced version.
"Overseas companies once held more than 90 percent of the market. Now we can make this type of abrasive ourselves," said Su, founder of Ningbo GSi Electronic Materials Co., Ltd.
Incubated by Yongjiang Laboratory (Y-LAB), a government-approved materials research institution in Ningbo city, GSi is among a crop of startups emerging in Zhejiang, a province that was home to 2,167 national 'little giant' enterprises by the end of 2025 -- about 12 percent of the country's total.
The title is a government designation for top-tier small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that excel in niche markets with strong innovation capabilities and core technologies.
Thanks to established mechanisms connecting researchers and manufacturers, and bridging lab-factory gaps, Zhejiang has grown from a manufacturing powerhouse to a fertile ground for innovative enterprises.
CO-BUILDERS, NOT TAKERS
Y-LAB has established joint innovation centers with local tech companies, with a clear division of labor: the lab provides technology and talent, while the companies offer application scenarios and market access.
Some enterprises want even closer ties, giving rise to the role of "part-time technology vice president" -- a title for university or research institution researchers who take part-time executive posts at companies.
They help identify technical problems, coordinate joint research and strengthen in-house innovation. By July, 2,017 such appointments had been made across the province.
Zhang Ruihua, a professor at Lishui University, was paired with Zhejiang Lishui Jiexiang Technology, a leading domestic maker of rolling functional components.
Zhang brought students onto the shop floor, mapped production bottlenecks, and focused on the automated assembly of guideway blocks, a hurdle for domestic high-end machine tools.
The resulting equipment works six to eight times faster than manual labor, and 11 enterprises now use multiple sets of the intelligent equipment developed by the team.
The company-university partnership has since expanded into a joint provincial engineering research center and a master's program, with 15 graduate students whose research topics all come from factory production.
Other companies team up with researchers even earlier. Ningbo Yongxin Optics Co. hired a Zhejiang University professor as its technology vice president, to steer pilot projects.
The partnership resulted in the firm's four-color laser confocal microscope which broke a decades-long foreign monopoly.
"You can't wait until a paper is published or a prototype is built -- by then the technical route is set," said Cui Zhiying, a company technician in the joint team.
"We want to be co-builders of original innovation, not takers of hand-me-down technology," Cui said.
FROM MARKET FRONTIER TO UNIVERSITY CLASSROOMS
Wang Xingxing, founder of the world's leading robot maker Unitree Robotics headquartered in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, also serves as an "industry professor" at his alma mater, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, with the standard academic requirements waived.
"We have long cooperated with Unitree, but the company and the school were still disconnected. With Wang Xingxing as our industry professor, we can go all out in both student training and research," said Chen Gang, a professor at the university.
To bridge the gap between fast-moving industry and university education, and to make up for students' lack of firsthand, real-world experience, senior technical professionals were introduced into Zhejiang's universities for such part-time positions.
So far, Zhejiang has appointed 973 of them.
In Ningbo, Jing Ge, chief engineer of a local new-energy subsidiary of CRRC, the world's top supplier of rail transit equipment, wears a second hat as an industry professor at Zhejiang Wanli University, where he helps set up the discipline, from which courses to offer to what they should cover.
Jing was also a key contributor to a project on ultra-high-power supercapacitors that won the 2025 national sci-tech award.
Citywide, more than 70 percent of Ningbo's industry professors have helped design academic programs, co-written 74 textbooks, developed 178 courses, and mentored more than 660 students.
FROM SCIENTISTS TO CEOs
When Zhejiang University professor Li Jingbo set out to build a company around his team's new silicon carbide chip, investors pushed back. A production line could cost hundreds of millions of yuan, and they were not ready to bet on a lab-born technology.
The hurdle Li faced is common. Researchers-turned-founders need more than scientific expertise -- they must pick a market, assemble a team and raise capital for technologies that can take years to mature.
Li found a partner in the Hangzhou Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, or SIOM-H, founded in 2019. It is among China's first "excellent-level" technology business incubators, built to help researchers clear exactly those barriers.
Qi Hongji, head of SIOM-H, calls the institute an "entrepreneurial partner." Its professional team fills gaps scientists often face in product development, marketing, team building and financing.
SIOM-H stepped into Li's project with 15 million yuan (about 2.2 million U.S. dollars) in angel investment, followed by other investors.
"It enabled us to make a start," said Li, chairman of startup Zhejiang XinKe Semiconductor.
Within months, SIOM-H helped attract nearly 50 million yuan from market investors, enough for second-hand equipment. In 2023, it helped secure hundreds of millions more, allowing Li to upgrade the production line.
Li's story is not an exception. As of July, SIOM-H had incubated more than 70 companies and attracted over 5 billion yuan in external capital, with the incubated firms' combined valuation exceeding 50 billion yuan.
"With stamina, passion and a team, we can take a company to the global forefront," Qi said. ■
