Abstract:    China′s manufacturing industry has the most complete industrial system in the world at present, ranking first in the world in terms of scale for 10 consecutive years. However, China′s manufacturing industry is still large but not strong, and key core technologies are "stuck", which has become the key to hinder China from becoming a world power in science and technology. Key core technologies are important tools of our country, which are of great significance for promoting the high-quality development of China′s economy and ensuring national security. Besides, cultivating key core technology innovation capabilities is the key to achieving breakthroughs in key core technologies. Therefore, under the urgent situation, how leading manufacturing companies cultivate continuous innovation capabilities in key core technologies has become an important issue that needs to be solved urgently. 
    At present, the research on key core technologies is still in its infancy. The existing literature is mainly limited to newspapers, news, and policy documents, while rigorous academic research is obviously insufficient. In particular, there is a lack of rigorous academic research on how companies can cultivate continuous innovation capabilities in key core technologies. Besides, although the research on the cultivation of enterprise innovation capacities has made some progress, these studies mainly focus on the cultivation of firm technological innovation capacities, independent innovation capacities, and strategic innovation capacities. Moreover, there is insufficient discussion on the cultivation of enterprise continuous innovation capacities, especially the lack of in-depth analysis of continuous innovation capabilities in key core technologies of leading manufacturing companies. In general, the existing research has not been able to answer the question of how Chinese leading manufacturing companies cultivate continuous innovation capabilities in key core technologies.
   TBEA has continuously achieved major breakthroughs in key core technologies by cultivating continuous innovation capabilities in key core technologies, and has continuously broken foreign technology blockades and market monopolies. Therefore, this study takes TBEA as the example, and deeply explores the key elements of leading manufacturing companies to cultivate continuous innovation capacities in key core technologies. This study reveals that continuous investment in independent innovation, building the in-depth integration of industry-university-research innovation consortium, establishing firm independent innovation platforms, integrating key technologies and innovation resources in the industry through continuous restructuring and mergers & acquisitions, gathering and integrating global scientific & technological innovation resources and integrating into the global innovation chain and industrial chain, and introducing as well as training leading talents in science and technology continuously are key elements to cultivate continuous innovation capacities in key core technologies. Meanwhile, the support of the central and local governments at all levels is the important driving force to cultivate continuous innovation capabilities in key core technologies. 
    This study mainly makes three theoretical contributions: First, this study deeply explores the continuous innovation capabilities in key core technologies of leading manufacturing companies, thus enriching the previous research on firm innovation capabilities. Second, this study specifically investigates the key elements of cultivating the continuous innovation capacities in key core technologies, thus extending the previous research on key core technologies. Third, this research discusses the continuous innovation of leading manufacturing companies, thereby adding to the previous research on enterprise continuous innovation. Besides, this study provides enlightenment for leading manufacturing companies′ practice of breaking through key core technologies, and provides policy implications for the Chinese government.

Key words: leading manufacturer, key core technology, continuous innovation capacity, technological breakthrough