Abstract: Science and technology parks are widely treated as an important initiative in the world to promote local high-level technological innovation and incubation of knowledge-intensive enterprises. However, science and technology parks may not turn out as expected in reality. In this paper, we firstly theoretically analyze the internal mechanism of how science and technology parks can optimize regional innovation structure, and divide science and technology parks are divided into “zombie” type, “enclave” type and “seedbeds” type on the basis of heterogeneous development state. Then, taking Wuhan East Lake National Innovation Demonstration Zone as the treated region, we empirically evaluate the effects of its establishment on multidimensional regional innovation and start-up of Hubei province via synthetic control methods. After a series of benchmark evaluation, robustness checks and placebo studies, we reach the following conclusions. From the perspective of innovation scale, the establishment of Wuhan East Lake National Innovation Demonstration Zone has no effect on low-level innovation in Hubei province, but has a significant and increasing promoting effect on medium-level innovation, high-level innovation and innovation commercialization in Hubei Province. From the perspective of innovation structure, the higher the level of innovation, the greater the promotion effect of the establishment of demonstration areas.The establishment of demonstration areas has also greatly and continuously enhanced the promotion effect on the level of regional science and technology entrepreneurship. The results show that the establishment of Wuhan East Lake National Innovation Demonstration Zone not only improves the scale of regional innovation in Hubei province, but also optimizes the regional innovation structure of Hubei Province by upgrading technological innovation levels and driving commercialization of the existing scientific and technological achievements. Lastly, we owe the initial success of Wuhan East Lake Science Park to its transcending the stage of “zombie” and “enclave” tech parks, and playing the role of regional innovation “seedbeds”.

Key words: science and technology parks, regional innovation structure, seedbeds of regional innovation, enclaves of regional innovation, synthetic control methods