Promoting the deep integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and manufacturing is critical for driving high-quality development in the manufacturing sector and enhancing capacity utilization. Using a sample of A-share manufacturing firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges between 2008 and 2022, this study applies Python text analysis to construct AI metrics and employs a panel fixed-effects model to investigate how the integrated innovation of AI with manufacturing technology impacts capacity utilization and its heterogeneous effects across technology types. The findings reveal that AI technology innovation and manufacturing technology innovation both significantly improve capacity utilization, with their integration yielding an even greater enhancement. Compared to exploitative manufacturing technologies, the integrated innovation of AI with exploratory manufacturing technologies produces a more pronounced capacity-enhancing effect. The integrated innovation of AI with manufacturing technology positively affects capacity utilization by improving asset flexibility and product competitiveness. This study contributes to the understanding of AI's enabling characteristics and offers valuable insights for improving capacity utilization.

Breaking through the "bottleneck" of key core technologies is a central task in achieving technological self-reliance and national strength. Driven by national innovation development strategies, Chinese government agencies have, in recent years, intensively introduced a series of science and technology policies, aiming to accelerate the campaign for breakthroughs in critical technologies through a coordinated "policy bundle". This study selects listed enterprise groups among China's top 500 manufacturing firms as the research sample and conducts a quantitative analysis of national-level science and technology policy documents issued between 2012 and 2020. It systematically investigates the effects of policy mix consistency and equilibrium on firms' capacity to achieve breakthroughs in key core technologies. The empirical results reveal that both consistency and equilibrium of policy mixes exhibit an inverted U-shaped relationship with technological breakthroughs, indicating the existence of an optimal policy configuration range. However, no significant synergistic effect between the two dimensions was observed. This study not only provides new empirical evidence and theoretical interpretation for ongoing academic debates on the effectiveness of science and technology policy innovation, but also offers decision-making insights—based on empirical analysis—for optimizing China's science and technology policy system and designing tailored policy portfolios aligned with the developmental needs of key core technologies.

In the wave of digital economy, the coupling and coordination of data and technology elements have become a key driver of enterprises' disruptive innovation. From the perspective of knowledge foundations, using patent knowledge width and talent knowledge transfer degree as mediating variables, and intellectual property protection as a moderating variable, this study combined data from China's energy storage listed enterprises (2012-2021) and employed a panel negative binomial model to explore the nonlinear relationship between the coupling coordination of regional data and technology elements and disruptive innovation. The findings revealed that:Firstly, the non-rivalrous and increasing returns to scale characteristics of data elements endow their coupling coordination with technology elements with dual attributes of resource allocation and incentive constraints, leading to an inverted U-shaped impact on disruptive innovation. Secondly, enterprises transform external innovation resources derived from element coordination into internal resources through knowledge management capabilities, including patent knowledge width and talent knowledge transfer degree, which subsequently influence disruptive innovation. This finding validated the "element coordination-knowledge management-innovation disruption" transmission mechanism. Thirdly, an increased level of intellectual property protection may trigger conflicts over property rights allocation and reinforce path dependence, thereby progressively weakening the relationship between element coordination and disruptive innovation. The findings will provide theoretical support for enterprises to implement data-driven disruptive innovation practices, and have implications for science and technology policy making.

Promoting the innovative development of SMEs in strategic emerging industries is a key measure to occupy the commanding heights of the new round of technological and industrial revolutions.This article takes SMEs in strategic emerging industries listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares from 2010 to 2023 as the research sample, constructs a digital embedding index from four dimensions—digital technology, data elements, digital networks, and digital responsibility, and systematically examines the impact of digital embedding on the innovative development of these SMEs.The study finds that digital embedding can significantly promote the innovative development of SMEs in strategic emerging industries.Mechanism tests show that digital embedding mainly empowers the innovative development of SMEs in strategic emerging industries through three pathways:stimulating innovation motivation, creating market opportunities, and enhancing transformation capabilities.Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the promoting effect of digital embedding on the innovative development of SMEs in strategic emerging industries is more significant when the government's digital policy supply is more complete, senior executives have higher digital literacy, and the level of industry competition is lower.This study provides theoretical support and empirical evidence for achieving high-quality development of SMEs in strategic emerging industries under the context of digital integration, and also provides policy references for the government in promoting the construction of a modern industrial system.