Abstract：

There is debate over whether digital transformation can promote corporate innovation. One perspective suggests that digital transformation helps enhance corporate innovation. Another perspective argues that phenomena such as highly concentrated markets and platform monopolies during the digital transformation process can easily widen the digital divide among firms, thereby inhibiting their innovation. This paper uses the first national big data comprehensive experimental zone established in 2016 as a quasi-natural experiment and employs the difference-in-differences method to find that this policy significantly improves corporate innovation levels. Mechanism tests reveal that corporate innovation is increased through direct pathways such as leveraging capital supply, talent reserves, and improving innovation-related laws, as well as through indirect pathways such as promoting corporate digital transformation.

Key Words：

digital transformation; national big data comprehensive experimental zone; innovation