The Research On The Influence Of Digital Transformation On Technology Catch-up Of Advanced Manufacturing Companies

The emergence of digital technology has changed the competitive basis of enterprises,and "strong and weak" has become the norm of industry development.With the sweep of a new wave of technology and industrial revolution represented by big data,cloud computing,5G and other digital technologies,digital technology is gradually becoming the core driving force leading the world economy into a new round of growth,bringing new opportunities for all industries to flourish,especially during the just past global new crown epidemic,digitalization has shown unprecedented development potential and resilience.As a late-developing economy,promoting important industrial fields to achieve catch-up with the world’s advanced technology is the only way for China’s economy to achieve high-quality and leap-forward development.Choosing advanced manufacturing industries in the rapid growth period and belonging to knowledge and technology-intensive as the focus of technological catch-up with developed countries will likely have greater potential comparative advantages and more windows of opportunity.As the main body of technological innovation and technological catch-up,successful technological catch-up of enterprises is the basis of national technological catch-up.In the context of digitalization,based on technology catch-up theory,integrated opportunity window theory and dynamic capability theory,using data of listed enterprises in China’s advanced manufacturing industry from 2011 to 2020,we empirically test the impact of digital transformation on advanced manufacturing enterprises’ technology catch-up with technology frontier enterprises,compare and analyze the differentiated performance under different ownership,factor intensity and regional heterogeneity conditions.At the same time,we construct a moderated mediation model with technology opportunity window,demand opportunity window and policy opportunity window as mediating variables and dynamic capability of enterprises as moderating variables to test the intrinsic mechanism of digital transformation on technology catch-up.It is found that digital transformation reduces the technology gap between latecomers and frontier firms and promotes technological catch-up,and this finding still holds after robustness tests such as replacing variables,changing fixed effects,and considering endogeneity.Heterogeneity tests show that the effect of digital transformation on promoting technological catch-up is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises,relatively technology-intensive enterprises,and enterprises in peripheral cities and central regions.The mechanism test shows that digitalization can promote technological catch-up by increasing technology,demand and policy opportunity windows.Further sub-dimensional mechanism tests show that breakthrough technological innovation and R&D policy support construct more effective catch-up paths between digital transformation and technological catch-up than incremental technological innovation and production policy support.In addition,dynamic capabilities positively moderate the mediating role of technology and demand opportunity windows between digitalization and technological catch-up.Finally,based on the findings of the study,we propose countermeasures to promote technological catch-up through digital transformation from various aspects,such as accelerating the digital transformation process,implementing dynamic digital development strategies "according to local conditions",focusing on breakthrough technological innovation research and development,exploring market demand,improving policy support,and cultivating core dynamic capabilities.The article reveals the mechanism of digital transformation driving technological catch-up of advanced manufacturing enterprises and provides micro-level empirical support for the theory of technological catch-up.The findings of the study have important implications for the policy formulation of China’s digital development and technological catch-up of innovation-oriented latecomer enterprises.