虽然数字经济发展驱动区域创新能力提升已经取得一定成效，然而数字产业化和产业数字化的作用机制、影响路径仍有待深入研究。对国内31个省市2008-2019年数据进行中介效应模型检验发现，数字经济核心产业不仅能够直接提升区域创新能力，而且能够通过加速数字赋能产业发展，间接驱动区域创新能力提升。异质性检验结果表明，东部地区数字赋能产业的中介效应最显著，西部地区较弱。因此，可以因地制宜、精准施策，充分发挥数字经济对区域创新能力的积极影响。

Digital economy is an economic activity with digital knowledge as the element, information network as the carrier and the use of information and communication technology to promote efficiency. It has three attributes: resource element, carrier platform and technological innovation, which are the main reasons for the improvement of regional innovation capability driven by digital economy. At present, there are abundant research results on the relation between digital economy and regional innovation capability, but the analysis of its action mechanism and transmission path needs to be further deepened. Therefore, based on the perspective of digital industrialization and industrial digitization, this paper divides the digital economy into the core industry of digital economy and the industry empowered by digitalization, and takes the industry empowered by digitalization as an mediating variable to analyze the direct impact and indirect impact of the core industry of digital economy on regional innovation capability.#br#Digital economy mainly includes digital industrialization and industrial digitization. Digital industrialization refers to the core industry of digital economy that produce or provide data elements, network platform and digital technology. Industrial digitization is industry empowed by digitalization, which implies the improvement of output and efficiency of traditional industries using data elements, network platform and digital technology. Current research results focus on the radiation and driving role of the core industry of digital economy on the industry empowed by digitalization, while the research results on how the industry empowed by digitalization reacts on the core industry of digital economy are relatively limited. Compared with the existing achievements, this paper brings the core industry of digital economy and the industry empowered by digitalization into the analysis framework of regional innovation capability improvement, and tries to clarify the transmission path of the industry empowered by digitalization reacting on the core industry of digital economy. Furthermore, this paper uses the mediating effect model to empirically test the impact mechanism of the core industry′s development level of digital economy on regional innovation capability, so as to provide alternative ideas for the quantitative analysis of the impact mechanism of digital economy on regional innovation capability.#br#Based on the panel data of 31 provinces from 2008 to 2019, this paper uses the mediating effect model to test the mediating effect of the industry empowered by digitalization in the process of the core industry of digital economy affecting regional innovation capability, and draws the following three conclusions. First, the development of the core industry of digital economy has a significant positive impact on the improvement of regional innovation capability. This positive impact comes from the triple attributes of the core industry of digital economy mentioned above. These three attributes provide resource elements, carrier platform and important development fields for technological innovation, so as to drive the improvement of regional innovation capability. Second, the industry empowered by digitalization plays a positive mediating role in the impact path of the core industry of digital economy on regional innovation capability. The core industry of digital economy can not only directly improve the regional innovation capability, but also indirectly drive the improvement of regional innovation capability by accelerating the development of the industry empowered by digitalization. The development of core industry of digital economy has improved the development quality, efficiency and driving force of digital-activated industry, and driven the development of the industry empowered by digitalization. In the relation between the core industry of digital economy and regional innovation capability, as the key link of data-driven innovation, the demand subject of network collaborative innovation and the application scenario of digital technology innovation, the industry empowered by digitalization plays an important mediating role. Third, the mediating function direction of the industry empowered by digitalization in different regions is basically the same, but the function intensity is different. In the eastern region, the mediating role of the industry empowered by digitalization is the strongest, while the mediating function in the western region is the weakest. The reason is that the leading role of the core industry of digital economy in the western region is not yet fully realized, the integration with the real economy is not enough, industries with strong competitive advantages have not been effectively enabled, and digitalization-driven high-quality development has not yet been realised.#br#