While the venue scale becomes bigger, and the amount of new museums is increasing faster, the establishments of science and technology museums abstract more and more attentions in China. But, for each new museum, how to define its own characteristics and play the role it should play? This article mainly investigates the importance of establishing an idea and how does the idea guide the innovation of a museum. Looking back the four stages of the development of science and technology museum and their different background characteristics of times to explore the development thread, we can find that the science and technology museums of different times always carry the characteristics of the time and the region. Along with the development of society, science and technology, the exhibiting content and form, and the educational idea keep changing. As the result, the science and technology museums of different internal ideas and external forms appear. This article takes Shanghai Science & Technology Museum for instance to interpret the characteristics of the museums belonging to the fourth stage, i.e. the modern comprehensive science and technology museums, and to analyses the differences between “Collection Mode” and “Exhibit Mode”, “Discipline-oriented” and “Theme-oriented”. At last, the article analyzes the innovations and the characteristics of domestic science and technology museums, in aim to offer some help to the museums under construction.

science and technology museums  /  establishment  /  ideas  /  modes