Huilin Xu, Chengbo Fu, Yang Wang
This study investigates the effect of firm digitalisation on emerging markets enterprises’ innovation performance in a global open innovation environment setting. Adopting samples of listed manufacturing enterprises in China that participate in a global open innovation network by establishing overseas subsidiaries, we investigate how digitalisation impacts their innovation performance. Empirical results show that digitalisation can positively and significantly enhance enterprises’ innovation performance. The results remain consistent after implementing robustness tests and endogeneity correction. Economic mechanism analysis shows that digitalisation facilitates innovation in the global open innovation environment by lowering information asymmetry, enhancing absorptive capacity, and improving risk management ability. The relationship of digitalisation on emerging markets enterprises’ innovation is more prominent for collaborative innovation when the enterprise is located in regions with better intellectual property protection and digital infrastructure and when firms engage with a wider scope of international partners and collaborators. Overall, our study emphasises the role of digitalisation in emerging markets enterprises’ global open innovation and extends the theoretical and empirical understanding of enhancing technological innovation capabilities of enterprises through global open innovation and participating in international innovation collaboration networks.