企业家精神的数字创新激励效应——基于数字专利视角

The Digital Innovation Incentive Effect of Entrepreneurship:A Digital Patent Perspective

数字经济时代,弘扬企业家精神对加快推进世界一流企业建设具有重要的现实意义。本文基于企业家精神视角,在结合IPC信息有效识别企业数字发明专利基础上,利用2011—2020年中国沪深A股上市公司数据,首次考察企业家精神对企业数字技术创新的影响及机制。研究发现:弘扬企业家精神能够有效促进企业数字技术创新,这一结论在选择国家级“双创”示范基地建设作为外生政策冲击,以及前工业化时期中国各城市潜在农业生产力作为工具变量等系列稳健性检验后仍然成立;企业家精神通过发挥研发效应、人才效应以及治理效应,显著促进企业数字技术创新;弘扬企业家精神对非国有企业、成长期与成熟期企业,以及知识产权保护力度强、创业活跃度高、政府对数字化关注度低地区的企业数字技术创新影响更突出。本研究为数字强国目标下激发和弘扬企业家精神提供了理论解释与经验支撑。

In the era of digital economy,digital technological innovation is regarded as the innovation field with the widest scope of application and the strongest radiation-driven effect,which has a profound impact on the current economic and social development.Enterprises,as the micro-basis of economic operation,are the key subjects of digital technological innovation,and how to drive enterprise digital technological innovation has become a frontier issue that needs to be studied by the academia.According to the classic Schumpeterian innovation theory,innovation is the introduction of“new combinations”of production factors and production conditions into the production system,and entrepreneurs are the ones who realize the reorganization of innovation factors,and their duty is to carry out“creative destruction”of the old mode of production.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to investigate the impact of entrepreneurship on digital technology innovation.This paper incorporates entrepreneurship and digital technology innovation into the same analytical framework,and utilizes the data of Chinese A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen to explore the impact and mechanism of entrepreneurship on enterprises’digital technology innovation.The results of the study show that entrepreneurship can significantly promote enterprise digital technology innovation.In terms of the mechanism of action,entrepreneurship empowers digital technology innovation through three channels:the“R&D effect”,the“talent effect”and the“governance effect”.In addition,the promotion of entrepreneurship is more conducive to the digital technological innovation of enterprises that are not state-owned,in the growth and maturity stages,and are located in regions with strong intellectual property protection,high entrepreneurial activity,and low governmental attention to the digital economy.Compared with the existing literature,the marginal contributions of this paper are as follows.First,the research perspective,based on the entrepreneurial spirit perspective,examines the impact of promoting entrepreneurial spirit at the regional level on the digital technological innovation of micro-enterprises,and broadens the research on the influencing factors of digital technological innovation.Second,on the empirical strategy,the comprehensive index of entrepreneurship is constructed according to the connotation of entrepreneurship.On this basis,taking the pilot policy of“mass entrepreneurship and innovation”demonstration base launched by the State Council in 2016 as a quasi-natural experiment,a progressive difference-in-difference model is constructed to identify the causal relationship between entrepreneurship and digital technological innovation more“cleanly”.In addition,this paper also conducts instrumental variable tests by selecting the potential agricultural productivity of Chinese cities in the pre-industrialization period to alleviate the possible endogeneity problem.Third,a multi-dimensional test is conducted in accordance with the life cycle of enterprises,the nature of ownership,and regional differences in intellectual property protection,entrepreneurial activity,and the supply of digital economy policies to examine the heterogeneous impact of promoting entrepreneurship on digital technological innovation in different contexts.Based on the findings of this paper,we put forward the following policy recommendations.First,the government should actively create an external environment conducive to stimulating entrepreneurial innovation.For example,it should further promote the reform of“management and service”,accelerate the transformation of government functions,decentralize government,and create a business environment with freedom,equality,justice and the rule of law.Second,the government should give enough policy preferences and support to companies that stimulate entrepreneurship and protect the rights and interests of entrepreneurs,and at the same time set up various incentive mechanisms such as additional financial guidance funds and innovation talent funds to encourage entrepreneurs to actively carry out innovation and entrepreneurship and other adventurous activities.Third,the power of entrepreneurs and other innovative talents should be emphasized to promote digital technological innovation in regions where non-state-owned enterprises and governments pay little attention to digitalization.