Abstract:    The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China puts forward in its report that "we will speed up the construction of a powerful manufacturing country, accelerate the development of advanced manufacturing industries, and promote the deep integration of the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence and the real economy". China has successively issued documents such as Made in China 2025, Notice on Continuing to Carry out Innovation Pilot Work on Integration of Internet and Industry and Guidance of the State Council on Actively Promoting Internet plus Action, providing important support for promoting the integration of Internet and industrial enterprises. The Internet is reshaping traditional industries, promoting the full integration of information technology and traditional industries, and has a significant role in promoting China′s technological progress and improving corporate performance. Then, what is the impact and the path of the Internet on innovation efficiency of industrial enterprises?
   Previous studies have paid more attention to the impact of information technology on enterprise innovation. With the rise of the Internet, recent studies have gradually turned to the impact of the Internet on innovation, discussing the impact of the Internet on product model innovation and the impact of the Internet on business model innovation. Therefore, it is necessary to explore how the Internet affects the innovation of industrial enterprises. The Internet is conducive to resource integration, reducing innovation costs and increasing the speed of innovation. Therefore, it has significant positive impact on the innovation efficiency of provincial industrial enterprises. Moreover, based on the theory of innovation openness, it is proposed that the Internet significantly enhances the innovation efficiency of provincial industrial enterprises through innovation openness. On the one hand, the wide-area and near-infinite connectivity of the Internet can enhance the scope and frequency of contact between enterprises and their stakeholders, promote the flow and diffusion of innovation elements such as knowledge, talents and technology, and help to enhance the breadth of innovation openness. Moreover, the Internet breaks up geographical boundaries, enabling enterprises to obtain resources worldwide and expand the spatial scope of open innovation. On the other hand, the Internet is pushing the traditional production mode to a brand-new production mode. Under the Internet economy, the combination and utilization of resources are more important than the accumulation of resources. Network externalities are internalized through replication, sharing and cooperation, resulting in endogenous economies of scale, reducing innovation costs, improving innovation capability and efficiency.
   Based on China′s provincial panel data from 2008 to 2016, the paper introduces the innovation openness into the research on the Internet and the innovation efficiency of industrial enterprises, and analyzes the impact of the Internet on the innovation efficiency of interprovincial industrial enterprises and its path of action. Furthermore, regional characteristic variables are introduced to distinguish the regional differences in this question. In theory, the paper shifts the research perspectives from the role of the Internet in product innovation and business model innovation to industrial enterprise innovation, and innovatively puts forward that innovation openness is the important path for the integration between the internet and industrial enterprises. In practice, the paper provides suggestions and enlightenment for the transformation and innovation of China′s industrial enterprises in the Internet era.
    The results show that: (1) The Malmquist index method, which is a non-parametric method used more, is used to measure the innovation efficiency of provincial industrial enterprises. The innovation efficiency is subdivided into total factor innovation efficiency (TFP), technical efficiency (EFF) and technical progress (TECH), and these three indexes are taken as explanatory variables. The empirical results show that the Internet plays a significant role in promoting total factor innovation efficiency, technological efficiency and technological progress of interprovincial industrial enterprises. (2) The paper divides the innovation openness into the breadth of innovation openness and the depth of innovation openness, and tests the mediating effect of the breadth and depth of innovation openness in the Internet and the innovation efficiency of interprovincial industrial enterprises with the sequential regression test procedure. Through the breadth of innovation openness, the Internet has significantly promoted the total factor innovation efficiency, technological efficiency and technological progress of interprovincial industrial enterprises. Through the depth of innovation openness, the technological efficiency of interprovincial industrial enterprises can only be improved. (3) Based on the overall research, in order to investigate the Internet, innovation openness and innovation efficiency of interprovincial industrial enterprises in various regions, the whole country is divided into eastern and midwest samples for research respectively. The Internet has a significant role in promoting industrial innovation efficiency in the east and midwest, but there are differences in the ways of action. The Internet has mainly promoted the total factor innovation efficiency of industrial enterprises in the eastern region through the promotion of technological progress, and has mainly promoted the total factor innovation efficiency of industrial enterprises in the midwest regions through the promotion of technological efficiency. (4) The mediating effect of innovation openness is obviously different between the east and midwest. The mediating effect of breadth of innovation openness is not obvious in the east, and there is a significant mediating effect in the total factor innovation efficiency, technological efficiency and technological progress in the midwest. The mediating effect of depth of innovation openness is significantly different between the east and midwest, which mediating effect is all not significant in the east and only significant in the technological efficiency in midwest.
   Compared with the existing literature, the possible innovation contributions of this paper lies in: first, expanding the research from examining the relationship between information technology and enterprise innovation to examining the relationship between the Internet and the innovation efficiency of industrial enterprises, revealing the role of the Internet in the innovation of industrial enterprises; Second, based on the theory of innovation openness, the breadth and depth of innovation openness are used as mediating variables to answer the path of the Internet to improve the innovation efficiency of industrial enterprises; Third, introduce regional characteristic variables to analyze the regional differences of the impact of the Internet on the innovation efficiency of industrial enterprises, and provide some policy implications for the integration strategy of the Internet and industry. Based on the research conclusions of this paper, the following countermeasures and suggestions are put forward: first, speed up the deep integration of the Internet and industrial enterprises, and become a booster to improve the innovation efficiency of industrial enterprises; second, improve the innovation openness of industrial enterprises and continuously open up new paradigms of real economy innovation; third, encourage all regions to explore ways to integrate the Internet with industrial enterprises with differentiated Internet policies.

Key words: Internet, innovation efficiency, breadth of innovation openness, depth of innovation openness