How digitalisation empowering firm innovation breaks the game? Based on fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis

The digital era leads the digital transformation of firms to become a significant way to drive innovation. However, the existing research has not deeply discussed how digitalisation empowering firm innovation breaks the game. Through configuration thinking and holistic perspective, using technology-organisation-environment (TOE) framework, this study explores the multiple concurrent factors of digitalisation empowering firm innovation. Based on the cases of 30 Chinese high-tech firms, this study investigates the configuration effect of six important factors on firm innovation ability by fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The results show that three conditional configurations or innovation paths can contribute to high firm innovation ability, namely technology-organisation driven innovation, organisation led innovation and comprehensive collaborative innovation. Among them, digital infrastructure is the underlying support for digitalisation empowering firm innovation, and cross-boundary cooperation plays a key role in such innovation. The main findings have theoretical and practical significance for firm innovation under the digital background.