Accelerating the formation of new quality productive forces is the essential path to building China's new competitive advantages and gaining development initiative, with institutional innovation playing a leading role in this process. Can the construction of free trade zones, as a "test ground" for institutional reform, unleash institutional dividends to empower the development of new quality productive forces in enterprises? Based on the panel data from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2022, this study employed the staggered difference-in-differences (DID) method to empirically analyze the impact of free trade zones construction on enterprise new quality productive forces and its mechanisms. The findings revealed that: First, free trade zones construction can empower the development of enterprise new quality productive forces, and this conclusion remains robust after a series of rigorous tests; Second, the mechanism analysis showed that free trade zones construction empowers new quality productive forces of enterprises by alleviating financing constraints, promoting digital transformation, and advancing marketization; Third, the heterogeneity analysis indicated that, at the enterprise level, free trade zones play a more positive role in promoting new quality productive forces in non-state-owned and small-scale enterprises; at the industry level, the impact of free trade zones on new quality productive forces is more pronounced in high-tech and non-high-pollution industries; at the regional level, the promotion effect of free trade zones is more significant in regions with superior industrial structures and higher levels of intellectual property protection. This study has provided a systematic empirical analysis of how free trade zones construction facilitates enterprise new quality productive forces and it will offer valuable policy insights for optimizing institutional opening-up and fostering high-quality development of new quality productive forces.