Abstract: As an organic medium that deeply integrates the Internet economy and the real economy, how and whether the Industrial Internet can enhance the core competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises through innovative models have become an urgent issue. There is presently a deficiency in focused research on the mechanism through which the Industrial Internet can augment the core competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises. Firstly, regarding the exploration of business models, current research predominantly employs case analysis methods, choosing prominent companies like Haier as subjects for investigation. However, cases that rely too much on a few firms may not adequately represent the diversity and complexity of the manufacturing industry. Additionally, empirical research on innovation models primarily concentrates on quantifying technological innovation through the lens of input and output measures. However, there is a notable dearth of a more encompassing perspective to assess innovation in models. In-depth exploration of business models and comprehensive examination of innovation mechanisms have not yet received sufficient attention. Secondly, whether there will be a lag effect in the impact of the Industrial Internet on promoting the core competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises has not been extensively studied. In practical usage, the Industrial Internet’s impact may take time to fully emerge. Understanding this temporal delay is crucial to a scientific explanation of its impact mechanism. To study the effect and mechanism of how the Industrial Internet promotes the core competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises, this study introduces the innovation model as a facilitating factor and establishes a theoretical model.
By using A-share listed manufacturing enterprises from 2014 to 2020 as research samples, the study finds that: (1)The Industrial Internet can significantly promote the core competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises, but there will be a certain hysteresis effect through endogeneity analysis and robustness testing. The reliability of the results is verified. (2)The analysis of the transmission mechanism shows that technological innovation has a masking effect between the two, and a model innovation has a mediating effect. This is not fully supported in the current period, indicating that there is a certain lag effect. (3)Heterogeneity analysis shows that the Industrial Internet plays a more obvious role in promoting the core competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises among state-owned enterprises. The impact of the Industrial Internet on the core competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises in the east and west is more obvious. The eastern region was the first to introduce Internet technology and has gradually moved towards high-end. Although the western region has developed slowly, its own resources and national strategic deployment have brought opportunities to it. (4) This paper further uses machine learning models to find that the importance of the Industrial Internet’s impact on core competitiveness is equivalent to traditional factors. In addition, it also explains its non-linear trend on core competitiveness.
The study provides a new theoretical framework for the mechanism of the Industrial Internet affecting the core competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises. In the future, experiments can be designed to obtain data from non-listed companies for testing. Secondly, this study selects the number of R&D personnel to measure technological innovation. Future research can be characterized from the perspective of innovation output, such as the number of patents, new product R&D funds.

Key words: Industrial Internet, core competence, technological innovation, model innovation, machine learning

摘要： 为了研究工业互联网如何促进制造企业核心竞争力的效应及影响机制,本文将创新模式作为传导作用引入,构建理论模型。通过2014——2020年A股上市的制造企业作为研究样本,研究发现,工业互联网可以显著促进制造企业核心竞争力,但会存在一定的滞后效应,并通过内生性分析和稳健性检验验证了结果的可靠性。传导机制的分析表明,技术创新在二者之间存在遮掩效应,模式创新存在中介效应。异质性分析表明,工业互联网在国有企业以及东西部地区的促进较为明显。本文进一步运用机器学习模型发现,工业互联网对核心竞争力影响的重要性与传统因素相当,此外还解释了其对核心竞争力的非线性趋势。本文的研究为工业互联网影响制造企业核心竞争力的内在机制提供了新的理论框架。

关键词: 工业互联网, 核心竞争力, 技术创新, 模式创新, 机器学习