The Dilemma of Domestic Instruments: Creating Two Separated Products

The role of instruments in our lives is increasingly important because the development and innovation of scientific instruments and equipment is directly related to the national economy and the people's livelihood, especially in the field of high-precision or large-scale and market-effective instruments and equipment and must be replaced. The urgently needed field of imported society. However, it is precisely in these important areas that the problem of indigenous innovation of domestic scientific instruments is particularly difficult.

The complete innovation process of scientific instruments should be a process of “use-create-use-create”. This is also the essential feature of scientific instruments. However, in the current scientific research and industrial environment, such a recycling system is still difficult to establish.

In foreign countries, scientific instrument manufacturers often “attach” to universities and research institutes, and create and improve their own ideas by collecting scientists’ ideas and their semi-finished but immature semi-finished products, in order to enrich and update themselves. The product system in order to maintain its position as a technological device in scientific research; or to take a keen grasp of market trends and feedback to scientists and technicians, encourage them to develop products that can directly address actual needs. No matter which mode of development, the continuous process from "use" to "making" is indispensable. Therefore, universities and scientific research institutions naturally become the source of scientific instrument creation, and companies are responsible for innovation and quality control in manufacturing.

Scientific instruments are mainly created by scientists. Its primary goal is to satisfy scientific research needs and lead new scientific work. However, the situation in our country is “separation of creation and use”, national investment, R&D of scientific research units, manufacturing of enterprises, and separation between scientific research and manufacturing, rather than leading each other.

In fact, in some colleges and universities, there are plenty of people who are spending their money and drumming scientific research instruments with interest. These teachers often have more spare time and students help, and his work and instrument development are often closely linked. However, this purely interested activity has very little connection with business. In many cases, it is not possible to reach the stage of transformation.

Even if there are results, many teachers tend to sell the results. Although this avoids all sorts of changes in the conversion period, this semi-mature result often loses its vitality.

The market demand for scientific instruments is small, but the profits are considerable. It may be sufficient to sell the profits of a single instrument for several years. This model is relatively easy to succeed, but it has to bear the huge risk of entrepreneurship, which makes many teachers fall on the way to success.

According to incomplete statistics, some of the scientific instruments launched by China since the Eleventh Five-Year Plan have independently developed related major projects or special national allocations of more than 1.3 billion yuan. High-end instruments are the leading part of the scientific instrument industry. Without such major projects and large projects, there will be no bottom of the pyramid of the entire instrument industry. The soil of the market, or market demand, is available in any country, but if there is no major scientific instrument engineering or project support, this market will not develop for long. The scientific instruments industry in the United States and Europe is very developed and behind it all have the support of national scientific plans.

Scientific instruments are not completely manipulated by commercialization, and scientific meaning and the market are sometimes not much related. At the same time, the country needs to raise it to the height of the quasi-military industry, continue to increase support for major scientific research projects of scientific instruments, and further encourage enterprises to participate in innovation, because from the "Made in China" to the "Creation in China," the company is still core power.