中共二十大报告指出要完善科技创新体系，支持“专精特新”企业发展，解决关键技术领域“卡脖子”问题。运用双重差分模型检验“专精特新”企业培育对企业高端创新的作用机制及异质性特征。研究发现：①“专精特新”企业培育能助力企业高端创新，缓解企业创新“低端锁定”困境；②“专精特新”企业培育通过缓解企业融资约束、提高企业风险承担水平和增加分析师关注促进企业高端创新；③数字金融、数字化转型和高管海外背景能强化“专精特新”企业培育对企业高端创新的影响，而行业竞争则会削弱“专精特新”企业培育对企业高端创新的影响；④“专精特新”企业培育通过促进企业高端创新提高企业国际化深度。据此，提出完善“专精特新”企业培育政策和提高企业高端创新的相关建议。

As China′s economy has reached a new normal of development, the traditional economic growth model has become insufficient, and the factor-driven and scale-expansion-oriented development mode cannot sustainably promote economic development; therefore, it is an urgent task for China to transform the development mode and realize high-quality and efficiency-oriented development. In realizing quality and efficiency-oriented development, high-end innovation is the key. According to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), China's R&D expenditure in 2022 exceeded 3 trillion yuan, while the intensity of R&D investment also increased significantly to 2.5%. These figures demonstrate that China has been committed to strengthening scientific and technological innovation to promote economic transformation and upgrading as well as sustainable development. However, although China has invested a lot of resources in scientific and technological innovation and made remarkable progress, the proportion of invention patents in the total number of patents granted in China in recent years has been around 20%, while this indicator of the United States has remained at around 90%, reflecting that China's current level of high-end innovation is low, and it is still in the trap of "locking in at the low end" of technological innovation. In particular, with the increasing complexity of the international political and economic situation, there is still a large gap between China and the developed countries in the field of high-end technology, and some key high-end technology is still dependent on imports, which will lead to China facing the plight of technological innovation "low-end lock-in" in some key industries, i.e., the degree of dependence on high-end technology is too high, which makes China easy to be constrained by others.Therefore, against the above backdrop, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore how to drive high-end innovation of enterprises for China to realize high-quality development and break through the predicament of "low-end lock-in" in technological innovation.
This study employs the double-difference method and empirically examines the impact, mechanism, heterogeneity and economic consequences of the cultivation of SRDI enterprises on the high-end innovation of enterprises. It takes 2015-2022 GEM, KIC and SMB listed companies as samples, and compiles "specialized, refined, differential and innovative" (SRDI) enterprises in SMB, KIC and GEM as processing groups by referring to SRDI enterprises recognized and cultivated by CnOpenData and CNRDS database; the invention patent data for measuring high-end innovation of enterprises is sourced from the CNRDS database, while the digital finance data is obtained from the Peking University Digital Inclusive Finance database. Besides, all other required data in the study are from the CSMAR database. Then, the samples with missing observations of variables are first excluded, followed by the samples of ST category and financial industry; and finally, the continuous variables involved in the paper are winsorized at the level of 1%.
The results show that the cultivation of SRDI enterprises enhances enterprises' high-end innovation and alleviates the predicament of "low-end lock-in" of enterprise innovation; the impact of SRDI enterprise cultivation on enterprises' high-end innovation is strengthened by alleviating financing constraints, improving enterprise risk-taking ability and increasing analysts' attention; the impact of SRDI enterprise cultivation on enterprises' high-end innovation is strengthened by digital finance, digital transformation, and the overseas backgrounds of executives; and the impact of SRDI enterprise cultivation on enterprises' high-end innovation is weakened by competition in the industry.
The findings suggest that, for SRDI enterprises, it is essential to invest in advanced digital technologies, value the diversity of their executive teams, and enhance their creativity and competitiveness by hiring executives with overseas experience, as well as to actively expand overseas markets and carry out international technological exchanges and cooperation; while the government should accelerate the construction of service platforms for SRDI enterprises and the promotion of digital finance, formulate more inclusive financial policies, and strengthen legislation to protect SRDI enterprises′ intellectual property rights and trade secrets to ensure that enterprises can compete in a fair environment.