The Exploration and Practices of TusPark in Promoting Business Incubation and Industrial Development

Abstract

As a new platform for innovation, China's national university science parks gather a wealth of resources for innovation.  They are not only the carriers of new knowledge, technologies and systems, but also that of new cultures. As one of the first batch of national university science parks in China, TusPark, which is backed by Tsinghua University with the active participation of varied entrepreneurial, R&D and financial institutions, has basically developed an ecological network for innovation that is distributed throughout the country. It has become an important platform for further transformation of the scientific and technological achievements of universities, as well as promoting the development of strategic emerging industries. Focused on TusPark’s functions and roles in advancing startup incubation and industrial development, this paper conducts an in-depth analysis of TusPark’s developmental path, with research based on interviews conducted with people involved in TusPark’s construction and operations, as well as reviewing the developmental history and models of global university science parks with international perspectives and extracting TusPark’s unique developmental path and model. The aim of this paper is to  analyse how TusPark, as the science park of China’s top university, blazed a trail for business incubation and industrial development. The paper presents some typical cases and explains TusPark’s major models for business incubation and industry cultivation. It also discusses the main factors of TusPark’s success and explores its approaches for encouraging future development under new domestic and international circumstances.   This article is mainly divided into two parts: The first part mainly introduces historical background, main functions, operation mode, core achievements, success factors and future development prospect of TusPark; the second part briefs planning, construction and the operation management organization TusPark - Tus-Holdings Co., Ltd., including the company's founding background, development history, equity structure, management team and other basic information, as well as the original business model by TusHoldings, that is, building an innovation ecosystem with features of TusHoldings through the "multi-dimensional triple helix" model of government-enterprise-university, park-industry-finance and technology-capital-industry; and the ways to enhance core competitiveness of TusHoldings by building global innovation network, vertical incubation system and innovative industrial clusters.