“If you have any leads on projects, be sure to contact me.” This message came from the East China Project Exchange Group.

Clearly, no investment opportunity should ever be missed...

Having worked in the investment promotion field for many years, I’m constantly asked the same kind of questions:

Where exactly are the investment opportunities? How do you seize them? What steps should you take?

Opportunities are always there, but most of them go to the “first mover.”

But why is it still a case of “casting ten nets, catching nothing”?

In reality, the key to investment opportunities lies hidden. Where is it hidden? It lies within the industrial chain.

This forces investment professionals to grab a magnifying glass, dive headfirst into the industrial chain, and peer through the cracks to “scrape out” projects.

Good projects are unearthed through meticulous effort

Projects are scarce—especially good ones.

When it comes to good projects, if multiple industrial parks compete for the same location and industrial layout, the parks are at a disadvantage.

In particular, attracting high-quality projects requires a lengthy period of “exploratory” work in the early stages. How many times have investment promotion efforts ended without results, despite nothing but enthusiasm?

One investment promoter remarked, “Why should a good project land in your park? What can you actually offer?”

To compete for top-tier projects, he prepares four site proposals for every site visit, each featuring relevant supporting enterprises in the surrounding area.

Setting aside the question of whether land resources are sufficient, the presence of supporting enterprises is key. Securing a high-quality project allows for “tracing the vine to find the melon”—a targeted approach to industrial chain investment promotion—where you dive in headfirst to “pinpoint the project.”

First, identify what “fruits” the enterprise itself bears, then trace the vine outward to gather its own industrial supporting enterprises. This makes “tracking” the direction of the next “vine” much more targeted.

Since companies meticulously calculate every expense, you must present a detailed “cost breakdown.” Beyond production factors, the most critical element is the upstream and downstream supporting enterprises.

Take Jinan, for example: semiconductor projects were established almost simultaneously with BYD’s vehicle manufacturing project. The establishment of these industries, in turn, has brought along a whole chain of related sectors, including batteries, materials, and machinery manufacturing.

Therefore, no project can exist without its supporting industrial chain. The finer the division of labor within the industrial chain, the greater the value added, and the longer the chain becomes.

Many people believe that investment promotion simply involves “pulling in” any project that comes along, but this is not the case.

Attracting investment is a “technical task”; it requires not only “recruiting” but also “selecting.” During this process, identifying mid-to-high-end manufacturing industries and urban economic projects that are both pioneering and catalytic is the key to elevating the local industrial landscape.

Differentiation Is Forged Through the Industrial Chain

What is differentiation?

In a nutshell: scarce value backed by barriers to entry.

Scarcity means being unique. I am different from the giants; I am different from the mainstream. Being different from the giants means niche specialization. Being different from the mainstream means catering to a niche audience.

Investment promotion cannot cover every aspect. To achieve differentiation, one must dive deep into the industrial chain and focus on a specific link or point.

Selecting a specific industrial cluster or region means establishing a clear direction for your primary target customers. This decision must be based on the region’s industrial capacity and the surrounding industrial environment.

When planning an industrial cluster in a specific region, you must align with that region’s development plans for the next 3–5 years. By leveraging local resources, population dynamics, and the pace of urban development, you can establish overarching and phased objectives, moving toward quantifiable and actionable implementation.

In this way, local authorities can annually identify and attract core resources and key projects within the ecosystem.

After clarifying the investment promotion direction, identify a list of core projects based on the profile of leading enterprises, select specialized investment promotion personnel, and dedicate full attention to deeply cultivating this specific sector.

The most critical metric for measuring focus is time efficiency: how much time is spent on a particular stage and how quickly one can grasp the underlying dynamics and mechanisms serve as quantitative indicators of focus.

As an investment promoter, you must know exactly what you want and ensure that external distractions do not compromise the effectiveness of your information gathering. Crucially, do not allow yourself to be led around by the nose; a passive approach to work will yield no efficiency, even if you maintain focus.

In particular, the more booming a specific industrial chain becomes, the more local investment promotion efforts must remain level-headed. The government should address market shortages; otherwise, when the tide recedes, it will lead to a waste of resources.

Currently, homogenization is a significant issue across the country. Cities should pursue differentiated development based on their specific functions, industrial strategies, and economic conditions.

From a long-term development perspective, pursuing a differentiated approach to create unique industrial parks will help enhance industrial competitiveness and drive sector growth.

Conversely, when major cities seek to develop high-tech industries such as biopharmaceuticals and information technology, how can other regions demonstrate their competitiveness if they simply follow suit?

Large enterprises are nurtured

In the past, investment promotion was all about “prioritizing the big and letting the small go.” To attract multinational corporations and listed companies, top local government officials would lead the charge, draw up visit plans, and offer generous settlement terms—often providing support through “super-national treatment.”

There are essentially two reasons behind this:

First, large enterprises possess advanced technology, state-of-the-art equipment, mature operational models, and stable supplier networks.

Second, such enterprises are large in scale, involve substantial investment, and generate high returns, thereby driving local employment and fiscal revenue.

Investment promotion should not focus solely on scale, but also on quality.

There is no need to fixate on first-tier cities or compete in the “fiercely competitive” markets of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. Instead, focus on deepening engagement in niche segments of leading industries and attracting leading enterprises along the industrial chain.

Following the principle of “strengthen what is strong, attract what is lacking, and supplement what is weak,” we should dive headfirst into the industrial chains related to specific projects to “build connections.”

In particular, last year’s Government Work Report once again emphasized the cultivation of “specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative” enterprises. This implies that attracting and nurturing such small and medium-sized enterprises may become the next main battleground for investment promotion.

From today’s perspective, judging projects solely by their size is one-sided; selecting projects that align closely with regional development is more conducive to local growth. The practice of fixating solely on large enterprises no longer meets the demands of the times; attracting “technology” through local investment promotion is the core driving force behind high-quality development.

For localities—whether early adopters or latecomers—investment promotion should follow the principle of “starting small before going big, and starting low before aiming high.”

First, there must be a “flock of small birds”; only then can “a hundred birds gather around the phoenix.” The process inevitably begins with low-value-added industries. Through continuous recruitment and cultivation, the industrial tier is gradually elevated, the industrial chain is extended, and value-added is enhanced—only then can the scope for local development be broadened.

Localities should identify high-quality enterprises within their core industrial chains, analyze their respective strengths and weaknesses, and establish enterprise cultivation pools for categories such as “small-to-medium enterprises,” “high-growth enterprises,” “specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative enterprises,” and “small giants.”

Through tiered cultivation, the leading role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in technology and standards is leveraged to promote the coordinated development of various enterprises across the entire industrial chain.

Local governments provide SMEs with fertile “soil” for survival, rather than merely listing them for public scrutiny.

Most importantly, by applying evaluation criteria based on output per unit area, small yet high-quality enterprises are directly granted preferential treatment, enabling them to grow from small to large, transform from weak to strong, and achieve quality upgrades.