Digital innovation has become an important engine for promoting the high-quality development of intelligent manufacturing enterprises, thereby promoting the high-quality macroeconomic development. Therefore, it is particularly important to explore the impact of digital innovation on the high-quality development of intelligent manufacturing enterprises and clarify its mechanisms．Unlike traditional innovation, digital innovation has some new features. Firstly, highly dynamic connectivity and recombination are essential manifestations of digital innovation. Secondly, users become influential value creators in the digital economy era. Lastly, digital innovation forms data sharing and integration across enterprises and industries, and it reshapes the boundaries of enterprises. These characteristics make it difficult to identify its mechanism of action.
In spite of some insightful findings on digital innovation and the high-quality development of enterprises,there are still at least two aspects for improvement. On the one hand, most of the related literature emphasizes the application of digital technology, and few studies have examined the impact of users as digital innovation entities on the high-quality development of intelligent manufacturing enterprises. On the other hand, relevant literature mainly studies the mechanism from the perspectives of operating costs, resource allocation efficiency, innovation investment, etc., but it is still unclear how digital innovation affects the formation of enterprise boundaries. Therefore, following Schumpeter's theory of recombination innovation, the paper divides digital innovation into design recombination and use recombination, examines its impact on the high-quality development of enterprises, and analyzes the mediating mechanism of enterprise boundaries.
Given the research mentioned above deficiencies and realistic background, this paper takes an unbalanced panel data set of 278 intelligent manufacturing companies listed from 2012 to 2021 as samples. The IPC classification number of the patent is used to identify digital innovation classification using the text classification model based on deep learning. All of the patents from the sample companies are divided into two categories, namely 17 514 design recombination and 1 725 use recombination. The study examines the impact of both on the high-quality development of intelligent manufacturing enterprises, further analyzes the driving mechanism of enterprise boundary reshaping and discusses the heterogeneity of the speed of industry technological changes and marketization level.
It is found that, firstly, design recombination and use recombination can significantly promote the high-quality development of enterprises, and the effect of use recombination is more significant. Secondly, in terms of mechanism, digital innovation can promote the high-quality development of intelligent manufacturing enterprises by narrowing their vertical boundaries and expanding their horizontal boundaries. Thirdly, further analysis reveals that the economic effects of digital innovation are more significant for intelligent manufacturing enterprises with rapid technological changes in the industry and located in areas with high marketization.
The incremental contributions of this paper are as follows. Firstly, this paper explores the effects of digital innovation on enterprise development from the perspectives of both enterprise and user participants, which provides new theoretical support for future studies on digital innovation by taking a recombination approach, and breaking through the limitations of previous literature that only focused on a single actor. Secondly, this paper divides digital innovation into two categories, which offers a fresh viewpoint for comprehending and gauging digital innovation. Lastly, this paper explores the impact of changes in the vertical and horizontal boundaries of enterprises on the relationship between digital innovation and the high-quality development of intelligent manufacturing enterprises. By examining the enterprise boundary, it provides new insights for future research on the mechanism of digital innovation.
The implications arising from this study are threefold. Firstly, intelligent manufacturing companies that aim for high-quality development should focus not only on applying digital technology in supply but also involve users in digital innovation, such as relying on digital platforms to empower deep user participation in the production process, and even independently create new value for products and services. Secondly, intelligent manufacturing enterprises should emphasize enterprise boundary management and enhance their cross-border capabilities. Thirdly, the government should enhance its assistance towards digital innovation within enterprises, and also enforce policies customized to meet the specific needs of such enterprises.