Abstract:    In the digital economy, understanding how digital information platforms empower enterprise collaborative innovation is a critical problem to be solved urgently. This paper investigated 536 manufacturing enterprises in eastern China, by adhering to the research framework of "digital information platform -- inter-organizational trust -- enterprise cooperative innovation performance", and using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), and explored the mechanisms and pathways through which digital information platforms empower enterprise cooperative innovation. The findings indicated that the digital information platforms possess search and sanctioning capabilities, both of which can enhance the performance of enterprise collaborative innovation, with sanctioning capabilities having a greater effect on improving collaborative innovation performance. Furthermore, both computing trust and relationship trust between organizations mediate the relationship between the application capability of digital information platforms and cooperative innovation performance, although their effects differ. This paper will provide a comprehensive framework for understanding how digital information platforms empower enterprise innovation within innovation networks. By uncovering the mediating effects of inter-organizational trust, this study has demystified the micro-processes of enterprise cooperative innovation empowered by the digital information platforms, contributing to the theory of digital affordance and enriching theories of open innovation and inter-organizational trust within cooperative innovation networks. Additionally, it will offer some theoretical guidance for the construction of digital information platforms and the management of enterprise trust.

Key words: digital information platform, cooperative innovation, inter-organizational trust