Recently, the newly revised Management Guide for Technology Enterprise Incubators in Huai'an (Trial) was officially issued and implemented. Closely aligned with the goal of building an important industrial technology innovation hub in the northern Yangtze River Delta, the document establishes three identification categories: standard, benchmark, and new-format incubators. It further improves the city's incubator cultivation, evaluation, and exit systems, providing institutional reference for the development of local incubation carriers.

Standard incubators focus on enhancing basic incubation capabilities, meeting compliance requirements for incubation space, the number of incubated enterprises, service teams, and enterprise growth indicators. Benchmark incubators aim for leading provincial standards, highlighting hard-core capabilities such as industrial clustering, technology platforms, and equity-based incubation, with a focus on cultivating high-growth technology enterprises. New-format incubators target emerging tracks such as industrial incubation, university research result commercialization, and OPC entrepreneurial communities, supporting leading enterprises, universities, research institutes, and professional institutions in building new types of innovation platforms to embrace more innovation models. Meanwhile, the guide is supported by a performance evaluation and dynamic exit mechanism. Evaluation results are graded into four levels: A, B, C, and D. If an incubator fails the evaluation for two consecutive years, its certificate will be revoked. This mechanism holds operating entities accountable and ensures a dynamic system of "survival of the fittest."

Beyond implementing the system, Huai'an guides all development parks at or above the provincial level to build a complete incubation chain, encourages leading enterprises and local universities to participate in incubator construction, and grants policy subsidies to operating institutions with outstanding performance. Counties and districts simultaneously provide supporting land, fiscal, and financial resources, fostering coordinated collaboration across levels to nurture technology innovation seedlings in fertile institutional soil.