A Study On The Influence Of The Overseas Background And Heterogeneity Of The Board Members On The Enterprise Innovation Ability

China’s socialist system has entered a new era.With the transfer of major contradictions,new changes have taken place in various fields.China’s development strategy has gradually shifted from an extensive economic development mode to a mode driven by innovation.The trend of "mass entrepreneurship and innovation" provides new guiding spirit and development power for China’s economic development.As the main body of microeconomics,the innovation ability of enterprises is significant for enhancing the competitiveness of enterprises and the national economic strength.The most intuitive embodiment of enterprise innovation is innovation input and innovation output,and the company size,duration,performance,assets and liabilities,and ownership structure,and all of these will affect the ability of enterprise innovation to a certain extent.However,the enterprise innovation ultimately depends on the main body who implements innovation.The board members,as the decision-makers of the enterprise,play a decisive role in whether or not the enterprise carries out the innovation activities that are with high input,high risk and extreme uncertainty.Therefore,this paper tries to explore the influence of the overseas background of the board members on the enterprise innovation ability and whether the difference of the overseas background will also affect it,so as to provide new suggestions for the innovation ability of the enterprise.Through the analysis of the influence factors of enterprise innovation and the governing role of the overseas background of the board members,the author thinks that the directors who have the overseas background are more likely to understand the importance of innovation to the enterprise,leading to the increase of possibility of enterprise innovation.Based on this,this paper studies the relationship between the overseas background of the board of directors and the innovation ability of the enterprise by taking A-Share listed firms from 2009 to 2016 as the research object.Secondly,the paper further constructs the overseas background heterogeneity index of the board members,and studies the relationship between the heterogeneity of the board members overseas background and the enterprise innovation ability.Finally,by using R&D expenditure intensity as a proxy for the number of applications for invention and by adopting Fama-Macbeth cross-section regression to guarantee the robustness of results.The conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)the board members overseas background has a significant positive correlation with the enterprise innovation ability,indicating that the companies with overseas background directors have stronger innovation ability compared with those without overseas background directors;(2)the proportion of board members with overseas background is positively correlated with enterprise innovation ability,indicating the greater the ratio of the board members with overseas background,the stronger the innovation ability of the enterprise,(3)there is a significant positive correlation between the overseas background heterogeneity of the board members and the enterprise innovation ability,which shows that the greater the diversity of the board members’ overseas background,the stronger the innovation ability of the enterprises.Finally,based on the results of theoretical analysis and empirical analysis,this paper puts forward policy recommendations for improving corporate governance from both the national and corporate levels.