Attraction and Retention of Startups in Urban Innovation Districts Author: Donglin Lyu Student No. 4707451 Thesis submitted for partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Construction Management and Engineering at TU Delft May, 2019 Master thesis Donglin Lyu [THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK] I Master thesis Donglin Lyu Attraction and Retention of Startups in Urban Innovation Districts In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science In Construction Management and Engineering At the Delft University of Technology To be publicly defended on Monday, May 20, 2019 Author: Donglin Lyu Student Number: 4707451 Email:
[email protected] Graduation Committee: Prof.dr. EM van Bueren TU Delft Chairman Dr. Yawei Chen TU Delft Supervisor Dr. Arie Romein TU Delft Supervisor II Master thesis Donglin Lyu [THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK] III Master thesis Donglin Lyu Preface Here is the thesis of my graduation research, the ending of the master “Construction Management and Engineering” at the faculty of Civil Engineering and Geoscience, Delft University of Technology. This research is conducted under the department of Management in the Built Environment together with OTB (Research for the Built Environment), Delft University of Technology. This report gains insight of the management of attraction and retention of startups in the urban innovation districts (UIDs). After the theoretical research on framework of attraction and retention of startups and empirical research conducted in the Merwe-Vierhavens (M4H) in Rotterdam, the advice to M4H is proposed. I hope the result of this report can help managers of M4H as well as Municipality and Port of Rotterdam to improve their management of attracting and retaining startups.