Push to embed academics in industry to fuel innovation

Beijing is stepping up efforts to embed universities in China’s innovation system, with academics increasingly being seconded to companies to accelerate research commercialisation and strengthen enterprise-led innovation.

The government-backed initiative, which has quickly expanded across a growing number of provinces over the past year, reflects a broader shift in how policy-makers want universities to contribute to innovation.

Rather than serving mainly as sources of patents and scientific output, they are increasingly expected to play a more active role in industrial upgrading, regional innovation and technological self-reliance.

The latest Nature Index 2026 Research Leaders rankings point to a sharp rise in China’s research output over the past two years. Yet turning academic discoveries into industrial and commercial outcomes remains difficult.

Official figures show that by the end of 2025, only 10.1% of patents held by universities had been commercialised or put into industrial application, suggesting that most patented technologies still remain unused.

In China, universities commercialise research through channels such as technology transfer, licensing, equity investment, joint development, consulting and technical services. But making those channels work at scale requires more than strong research capacity.

Embedding researchers in enterprises

New research suggests it also depends on incentives, intermediary support and institutional arrangements that can bring together universities, enterprises, investors and local governments.

Under the new arrangements, experienced researchers from universities are appointed to enterprises for fixed terms, where they advise on research strategy, identify technological bottlenecks and help connect firms with university expertise and scientific resources.

Unlike conventional university-industry partnerships, the initiative embeds researchers directly inside companies in roles such as “deputy managers of science and technology”.

The aim is to give academics a better understanding of industrial demand while involving enterprises earlier in the research process, rather than only at the stage of technology transfer.

The model is now being scaled up in multiple regions. The northern province of Henan, for example, plans to appoint around 3,000 science and technology deputy managers by the end of this year, while the eastern Zhejiang province has experimented with team-based secondments involving both professors and postgraduate students. Similar programmes have also emerged in Jiangxi and Sichuan as local governments seek to boost regional development.

New innovation strategy

Authorities have framed it as part of a wider effort to integrate the development of education, science, talent and industry – a new innovation strategy that has become increasingly central to China’s next phase of development.

Alongside this, the government has repeatedly called for stronger enterprise-led innovation and closer collaboration between universities and industry.

Rather than relying on universities simply to transfer patents after research has been completed, Beijing wants enterprises involved throughout the innovation chain, from identifying research problems and shaping projects to testing technologies, refining prototypes and bringing products to market.

The shift reflects a growing policy view that the corporate sector should play a larger role in translating basic research into scalable innovation.

Professor Joshua Ka-ho Mok, provost and vice-president (academic and research) at Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, said the move is part of Beijing’s broader attempt to move beyond a manufacturing-led growth model by tying basic research more closely to industrial upgrading.

“Putting basic research and industrial advancement together for promoting entrepreneurship is becoming strategically important to future development,” he told University World News, adding that the success of such arrangements would require strong “strategic steering”.

‘Strategic orientation’ differences

But for universities, whether the secondment scheme itself can meaningfully improve research commercialisation remains less clear. Li Fei, associate research fellow at the Institute for Science, Technology and Education Policy at Zhejiang University, said placements in firms may broaden researchers’ experience and spark new ideas, but deeper structural barriers remain.

In his view, the bigger obstacle to university-industry cooperation lies in what he described as “strategic orientation” differences between universities and enterprises. Without addressing that misalignment, the scheme risks becoming “more formal than essential”, he cautioned.

A study published last month in the Journal of the Knowledge Economy offers a similar diagnosis.

A team of Chinese scholars from Tongji University and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics found that universities and enterprises still work to very different priorities: academic research is still typically organised around disciplinary frontiers, scholarly interests and long-term scientific exploration, while firms are “more concerned with short-term returns, production efficiency and market competition”.

Drawing on interviews with researchers, technology transfer staff, enterprise representatives and policy-makers, the study found that many university technologies are not developed with immediate industrial application in mind, while firms often lack the capacity or channels to identify and absorb early-stage academic research.

The result is a structural gap that leaves many discoveries stuck in the “valley of death” between invention and application.

One university participant interviewed for the study described a growing effort to reverse this logic by “work[ing] backward from market demand to find our matching research teams”, so that research directions are shaped earlier by enterprise needs.

Li said current policy incentives were beginning to shift attitudes. “Many university employees are very enthusiastic about promoting the industrialisation of research achievements. This is a good thing in terms of [changes to] value orientation,” he told University World News.

But the study’s authors argue that universities are now being asked to assume new roles in the innovation system while the surrounding institutional environment has yet to catch up.

In particular, they point to a shortage of “proof-of-concept support, pilot validation platforms and institutional arrangements that help promising research move beyond early-stage uncertainty.”

The study also highlighted a more fundamental tension. Universities increasingly encourage academics to commercialise discoveries and work with industry, yet promotion and evaluation systems still reward publications, disciplinary achievements and traditional academic indicators.

Commercialisation, the authors noted, is therefore often treated as a competing rather than complementary activity.

Seen in this light, the science deputy manager programme appears to move collaboration further upstream – before technologies are fully formed – while exposing researchers more directly to commercial demand, engineering bottlenecks and production realities.

The programme is also designed to create stronger incentives. Participants are given greater flexibility to hold multiple paid positions, take entrepreneurial leave and engage more directly in enterprise work.

Evaluating commercialisation performance

At the policy level, meanwhile, the government has also begun reshaping how university commercialisation performance is evaluated. Patent commercialisation is becoming a more important component of assessments, while universities are no longer judged simply on the number of patent applications or grants they file.

Instead, the emphasis will shift towards actual implementation, quality and market application, according to new reform plans for patent funding and reward systems announced by the Ministry of Education earlier this year.

In recent months, the country’s top intellectual property regulator completed a nationwide screening of patents held by universities and research institutions.

As a result of the campaign to reassess and revitalise so-called “dormant” patents, officials said the number of patent transfer and licensing registrations had risen by 106% over the past three years.

They added that a number of key core technology patents had also been deployed in future-orientated sectors such as quantum technology, biomanufacturing, brain-computer interfaces and 6G communications.