Research on the Impact of Digital Transformation on Enterprise Innovation - Evidence Based on Patent Quality

Abstract

In the era of digital economy, digital transformation is becoming a key force driving enterprise innovation and upgrading. This paper selects China's A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2024 as research samples, and uses the breadth of patent knowledge as a proxy variable for innovation quality to systematically examine the actual impact of digital transformation on enterprise innovation, and further explore its transmission mechanism. The data tells us that digital transformation has really broadened the breadth of patent knowledge of enterprises and effectively improved the quality of innovation. In this process, the compensation incentive for management is a non-negligible intermediate link - digitization encourages enterprises to tilt the incentive focus to long-term innovation, managers are more willing to invest in interdisciplinary technology exploration, and the knowledge map covered by patents is expanded. A noteworthy finding is that the impact of digital transformation on patent quality is not balanced. In manufacturing, large companies and more competitive industries, this positive effect is much more obvious; in non-high-tech industries, the effect of digital empowerment is even more prominent than that of high-tech industries. This is probably because the technical field of high-tech enterprises is broad enough, and the incremental space that digital technology can do is not so large. In general, the value of this study is to shift the focus of observation from ''how much innovation has been done by enterprises ''to ''what is the quality of innovation'', and try to clarify a conduction path-first use technology to empower, then rely on governance optimization, and finally fall on innovation breakthroughs. These conclusions suggest that enterprises cannot simply copy the experience of others in digital transformation, and tailored strategic design is more desirable, and the supporting reform of internal incentive system cannot be ignored. For regulatory authorities, the formulation of digital economic policies should also be focused on, tilted to areas where the digital dividend is more pronounced, such as manufacturing and competitive industries. In general, this study focuses on the quality of innovation, which adds new evidence to the question of whether digitization can truly transform into the core competitiveness of enterprises.