Author Description

The Wanxiang Group was awarded a contract by the City of Hangzhou to develop a new industrial park, named the Wanxiang Innovation Energy Fusion City (WIEFC) over the next seven years (2017-2024). In 2016, the Group asked the RAND Corporation to help achieve its vision of developing the WIEFC into an innovative cluster built around smart and green automotive technologies by developing a mission statement and recommending supporting policies. There are several hundred industrial technology parks around the world, and developing innovative clusters occupies a prominent place among the goals of their planners. As a result, innovative clusters have been widely studied. Much is known about what policies and structures have been adopted, but less is known about what has worked. Identifying policies and structures that will successfully spark an innovative cluster is, therefore, at the heart of the present study. For this purpose, we sought to draw lessons from global experience, while also understanding the local context within which the WIEFC will operate. First, in support of the Group's vision for the WIEFC, we recommend a mission that describes the aims of the WIEFC. Second, this report identifies the contributing factors required to achieve that mission. Through an intensive, in-person study of two locations--the Stuttgart automotive cluster in Germany and the Aichi automotive cluster in Japan--supplemented by lessons from the academic literature on other clusters, these factors are sequenced into originating and sustaining factors. We then recommend policies for the implementation of these factors. Finally, we identify outcomes to measure the progress of the recommended policies.