Research On The Impact Of Digital Inclusive Finance On Innovation Of Technological SMEs

Innovation is the key to finding a new point of economic growth,which is the only way for China’s economy to move towards high-quality development.Technological SMEs have a high level of innovation spirit and technological sensitivity,which are the most dynamic and potential innovation group among enterprises.Under the traditional financial system,they are usually excluded by finance because of their operating characteristics.Digital inclusive finance(short as DIF)innovates the financial service model,which alleviates the two major problems of information asymmetry and high transaction costs in the financial market.Therefore,it provides more opportunities for technological SMEs to obtain financing.This paper studies the impact of DIF on the innovation of technological SMEs from the perspective of enterprise life cycle.This article takes enterprise data between 2011 and 2021 from the GEM and SME board as the sample.Based on the relevant theory of enterprise innovation and enterprise life cycle,and based on the literature review and the characteristics of technological SMEs,it firstly analyzes the internal logic of DIF affecting the innovation of technological SMEs,and focus on analyzing the differences in the impact of innovation at various stages of the enterprise’s life cycle.Then,it analyzes the heterogeneity of the impact of DIF on enterprise innovation in different life cycles in terms of ownership,scale and region.Furthermore,it analyzes the impact from the dimensions of enterprise innovation,digital inclusive finance and time segmentation.Finally,it analyzes the possible mechanism of the impact.The results show that:(1)DIF can effectively promote the innovation output of technological SMEs.It shows structural differences in different life cycle stages,and the structural differences change over time,but it always has a significant impact on the innovation of growing enterprises.(2)DIF is conducive to the improvement of the quality of enterprise innovation,and its impact on the substantive innovation of enterprises has significantly improved in the past five years.The use depth of DIF has a stronger impact on enterprise innovation than its coverage.(3)The impact of DIF on technological SMEs innovation in different life cycles is heterogeneous in terms of ownership,region and scale,which reflects the inclusion of DIF.(4)It is found that financing cost and R&D have partial mediating effect.Finally,this article proposes policy implications from the perspectives of government,finance institutions,and enterprises.