Technological innovation is one of the keys to manufacturing capacity development and it requires reasonable innovation strategy. The key is to choose appropriate technology sources. The technical characteristics of different manufacturing segments vary, and there is not a universal technology innovation strategy suitable for all manufacturing industries.#br#Although theoretically there are multiple sources of technology, in practice homogenization of technology prevails due to the pursuit of innovation quantity or the dependence on innovation path, which is mainly manifested by the abuse of R&D investment and strict external technology control leading to the waste of innovation resources and low-quality innovation. Hence there is great optimization need of the current technology source selection method. This paper focuses on the impact of different technology sources on industry technological innovation from the perspective of technology level, and distinguishes technological innovation indicators such as patents, invention patents and new product sales revenue to provide valuable reference for manufacturing industry.#br#This paper takes the balanced panel data of manufacturing industry segments from 2003 to 2019 to empirically test the heterogeneous effects of different technology sources on technological innovation in industries with different technology levels. As the manufacturing industry segments experienced three changes in 2002, 2011 and 2017, in order to ensure the consistency of statistical caliber, this paper merges and adjusts the data of manufacturing industry segments according to the approximation of the industries and the way of changes, so that the adjusted industry technology level does not cause drastic fluctuations, and finally gets 28 manufacturing industry segments with a total of 476 samples. The manufacturing industry segments are classified into high-tech industry group and the rest into medium and low-tech industry group, meanwhile, with reference to the study of Yuanhai Fu et al. (2014), the manufacturing segments are divided into high, medium and low technology industry for robustness testing.#br#It is found that firstly the effects of different technology sources on the overall output level of patents vary, among which the promotion effect of independent research and development is the most prominent, and the innovation incentive effect is more significant in industries with higher technology level. Secondly, for substantive innovation represented by invention patents, the incentive effect of technology introduction is better than that of independent R&D in high-tech industries because it can complement the key aspects of innovation and avoid R&D risks, while the opposite is true in non-high-tech industries. At the same time, domestic technology purchase has a dampening effect on invention patents, especially in high-tech industries, suggesting that domestic technology flow does not promote the quality of innovation in the industry, but rather hinders the iteration of advanced technologies. Finally, for the economic benefit of technological innovation characterized by new product sales revenue, foreign technology introduction and domestic technology purchase inhibit its growth, while technological transformation and independent R&D promote its growth due to the low absorption efficiency and high degree of domestic technology homogenization, and the corresponding effects are more significant in low-tech industries.#br#The contribution of this paper lies in the following aspects. Firstly, this paper analyzes the heterogeneous effects of technology sources on industry technological innovation in industries with different technology levels. Secondly, it distinguishes between patents and invention patents to examine the heterogeneous effects of technology sources on technological innovation at different levels, and further analyzes the reasons for the coexistence of high R&D investment and low quality innovation. Finally, based on the heterogeneous influence of technology sources on industry technological innovation, it analyzes technology sources which should be adopted by different oriented manufacturing segments and propose technological innovation strategies.#br#This paper suggests to firmly regard independent R&D as the main source of technological progress, and strengthen the examination of patent quality to avoid low-quality innovation. Secondly, we should balance technology introduction and independent R&D and seek cooperative innovation to make up for the disadvantage of independent R&D. Finally, we need to develop innovation strategies oriented to innovation objectives such as market effectiveness or core competencies to apply innovation resources effectively.#br#