Having experienced rapid expansion during the "era of growth," our industrial park is now entering a turning point in the "era of consolidation."

As land use policies continue to tighten across the country, the national industrial land market cooled off last year, with a significant decline in both the volume and number of land transactions.

With the arrival of the stock era, a refined industrial operation model has become the mainstream trend.

To improve their chances of survival, an increasing number of industrial parks are actively transforming themselves, moving toward providing comprehensive support for enterprise development.

Against this backdrop, the industrial parks that can accurately identify the core needs of their target clients and provide high-quality, differentiated operational services will gain a competitive edge in this cutthroat market.

01 Park Development Reflects Industrial Trends

Today, industrial parks have become the de facto hubs for regional economies and industrial development.

The development trajectory of industrial parks reflects the evolution of our industrial landscape—namely, the shift from traditional industries to modern industries, and from processing to innovation.

However, innovation does not happen overnight; rapid development requires resolving historical legacy issues.

During the era of expansion, the “unregulated growth” model of industrial parks that emerged—under a “short, flat, and fast” investment promotion approach—inevitably led to homogenization.

In the era of existing stock, these homogenization issues will intensify competition, making it increasingly difficult to revitalize the existing market.

Where does the new driving force for industrial development in these parks lie?

How can traditional industries shift gears and upgrade?

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Each of these pressing questions points to a fundamental reality: how industrial parks can generate core revenue.

Whether it’s absorption rates or the momentum of industrial development, the ultimate focus is on stable revenue—that is, ensuring the industrial park is on the “right” path.

What is needed here is not an overly rigid “correct” approach, nor a short-term, quick-fix strategy driven solely by profit. Instead, we must look toward the “appropriate” path for the next five, ten, or even twenty to thirty years.

This is similar to the Suzhou Industrial Park model I described in my article, “Capital-Driven Investment Promotion: The Essence of Proactively Using Capital to Facilitate Industrial Development.”

In 2009, Suzhou resolved to mobilize the entire city’s resources to create a world-class biopharmaceutical industry landmark, transforming the Suzhou Industrial Park into an internationally renowned and domestically influential “China Pharmaceutical Valley.” Over the subsequent decade, while the park’s leadership changed several times, policy and financial support for the biopharmaceutical sector never wavered. By pursuing multiple strategies in parallel—from providing full-cycle funding and incubation for startups to attracting mature multinational corporations—the park has achieved its current scale.

Rather than focusing on short-term profits, the approach is grounded in industrial positioning, with planning, investment attraction, and service upgrades aligned with the trajectory of the industrial chain to ensure relatively stable revenue.

For industrial parks with relatively mature business models, there are generally three primary methods to secure core revenue in the future.

First, investment returns—that is, returns generated from the incubation of invested enterprises. See Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park for reference;

Second, service revenue: leveraging ecosystem operations to increase service income, including the provision of high-quality specialized services. A notable example is the Malanshan Video Industrial Park in Changsha, Hunan, which focuses on the video industry chain and generates stable revenue through specialized services;

Third, long-term asset appreciation gains. This involves revitalizing the industrial sector and attracting a vibrant community within the district, thereby driving the development of adjacent residential and commercial properties as well as the broader real estate sector, which in turn generates capital appreciation. Of course, this long-term strategy is also closely tied to the overall economic environment.

02 Industrial Operations: Covering the Entire Lifecycle

Regional economic development relies on industry, and industrial development relies on park operations—this forms a complete economic cycle.

With the arrival of the era of existing stock, a consensus has gradually emerged within the industry: to excel in industrial operations, one must engage deeply with the entire lifecycle of the park.

What is the full lifecycle? Simply put, it is divided into three major phases: pre-development, during-development, and post-development.

The pre-phase includes processes such as industrial park positioning, industrial planning, and facility design;

In the traditional industrial park development cycle, tenant recruitment is often conducted after the planning and construction phases, which poses a problem: different industries may have vastly different requirements for facility space.

The current best practice is to bring tenant recruitment forward, ensuring that facility space design is considered during the industrial positioning phase, thereby reducing the difficulty of subsequent tenant recruitment.

The middle phase involves capital introduction, industry integration, and attracting target enterprises;

The current investment promotion industry employs a wide range of strategies, including but not limited to capital-driven investment promotion, industrial chain-based investment promotion, on-site investment promotion, and business-to-business investment promotion. Typically, local authorities selectively combine these approaches based on the specific stage of the investment promotion process.

At this stage, an industrial operations team that “understands the industry, understands the economy, is skilled in investment promotion, and can provide services” is particularly crucial. This is because such a team can establish a comprehensive and standardized implementation process, ensuring meticulous management of all procedural details—including investment promotion management, pricing management, and sales planning—while achieving precise recruitment aligned with industrial planning and the park’s positioning.

Take the collaboration between Guchuan United and Guangdong Medical Valley as an example: Guchuan United has introduced multiple high-quality enterprises to Guangdong Medical Valley, covering fields such as ophthalmic surgical robots, human stem cell technology, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and traditional Chinese herbal medicines, perfectly aligning with the park’s investment attraction objectives.

In the later stages, they strategically plan the layout of upstream and downstream industrial chains, refine the industrial ecosystem, and deeply integrate these efforts to drive the comprehensive development of the park.

Regarding the layout of supply chain extension, Chuzhou’s experience in implementing the “chain leader system” for attracting the photovoltaic industry is worth emulating.

By leveraging the “magnetic effect” of leading photovoltaic giants—including LONGi, JinkoSolar, and Sungrow—they have guided upstream silicon-based material enterprises and downstream photovoltaic companies to establish operations in succession. This has built a vertically integrated industrial chain encompassing quartz sand mining and processing, silicon wafers, photovoltaic glass, photovoltaic cells, photovoltaic modules, and inverters, successfully laying the industrial ecosystem foundation for the “World Capital of Photovoltaics.”

03 Investor Intelligence: The Key to Differentiated Operations

No matter how you look at it, in the era of existing industrial parks, effective industrial operations and investment promotion models must be differentiated.

A one-size-fits-all approach won’t attract quality projects!

Only through differentiated operations can a park stand out from the crowd of homogeneous industrial zones and become the top choice for target enterprises.

So, what is the basis for differentiated operations?

In other words, how can we determine whether our current operational strategies align with the expectations of our target clients?

In the age of big data, a comprehensive database of client intelligence may hold the answer.

What is a business intelligence database?

Take the GuChuan Big Data Platform as an example. It encompasses over 1.15 million genuine corporate site selection requests, accurately capturing core business needs and location preferences. Based on this data, it provides visualizations of investment industry trends and popular provinces.

By leveraging such a business intelligence database and utilizing the precise analysis of intelligent systems, we can identify high-quality target clients. Combined with an analysis of their specific needs, this approach helps us achieve efficient outreach and significantly boosts the success rate of subsequent investment conversion.

It can be said that the application of big data technology is the very "essence" of truly refined and differentiated operations.

Only through repeated validation by big data can our decision-makers make more informed scientific predictions and promptly adjust investment promotion strategies.

We can truly understand our own strengths—knowing our city’s position within the “national landscape” and the development status of target industries across the country.

We must truly understand the “other side”—grasping the current development status of similar regions, the recent progress of target industries in different areas, and identifying which industries we can successfully attract during regional industrial relocation.

This is the greatest value of the investor intelligence database—you could also call it a true “intellectual brain” tool.