The Guangdong Provincial Soft Science Research Base (hereinafter referred to as “the Base”) was officially established in January 2012. Based on the theory of technological innovation management and the theory of regional innovation system, the Base has conducted comprehensive research activities, organized interdisciplinary teams and integrated resources of industry, university and research to promote the effective connection between enterprise innovation practices and technology innovation theories, and to provide strategic planning and theoretical reference for enterprise technology innovation and decision making.
The Base is led by Professor and the PhD supervisor Zhang Zhengang of School of Business Administration of SCUT. The Base consists of ten member holding a senior professional title, five members holding a vice-senior professional title, two members holding a junior professional title and along with 16 enrolled master’s degree students. All members of the research team have strong research capability and rich practice experience, and their research interests include higher education management, regional development and industrial development, and urban development strategy research, etc.
As for the research aspect, being the principle investigator, the Base has engaged in 27 research projects sponsored by MOE, Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province and Guangzhou municipal departments, covering research fields such as enterprise innovation and data empowerment, regional development and industrial planning, intelligent manufacturing, and urban development strategies, etc. In the aspect of academic conference, six high-level academic conferences have been organized, in addition, other seminars and workshops are held at the base, such as the Seminar on Xi Jinping's Innovation and Development Thoughts, Seminar on Cultivating the World-Class Manufacturing Enterprise of China in the New Age, and the Guangzhou Practice New Development Concept Series Seminar I: Innovation is the first motivation - insist on innovation and development, etc. As for assisting the works organized by government departments, the Base has developed nearly 100 special research reports, and has provided consultations and recommendations for governmental science and technology decision-making, covering Guangdogn’s eight strategic emerging industries, emerging technologies and disruptive technologies. Specifically speaking, the Base mainly focuses on the following three aspects:
First, in the field of research and scientific activities, the Base attaches great importance to the combination of theory and practice, timely tracks the academic trends at home and abroad to conduct research activities, and at the same time changes the research methods depending solely on papers and biographs, instead of producing fruitful consultation reports, expert advice, and popular reading materials, etc. Through the continuous improvement of the theoretical research, building the theoretical framework of enterprise technology innovation, the base is gradually forming a theoretical system of enterprise technology innovation with Chinese characteristics.
Second, in the aspect of assisting government policy formulation, the Base has deepened the direction of industrial technology development by focusing on major international technological changes, and through the collection, collation and analysis of relevant materials, it has summed up a series of scientific, effective and operational decision-making consultation reports, thus to provides the provincial government with decision-making reference in strategy formulation and effective resource allocation.
Third, in the aspect of exploring the cultivation of enterprise innovation capabilities, the Base has gone deep into the front line of the enterprises through field research visits, regular outings to participate in social research, and enterprises visits, and has collected a large amount of first-hand data, which greatly assisted to explore the methods and models of scientific and technological innovation, and guide Enterprises carry out technological innovation activities.
