How Does Digital Transformation Affect Firms' Innovative Search Behavior? From the Perspective of Network Embedding

Within the realm of digital technology advancements, digital transformation has emerged as a crucial avenue for enterprises to overcome developmental limitations, achieve business transformation, and enhance the value of innovation. However, the innovation enabling mechanism of digital transformation from the perspective of process has not been deeply revealed. Therefore, based on the dual innovation theory and network embedding theory, this study investigates the influence of the extent of digital transformation on enterprises-search behavior for innovation. Using the dataset of listed firms in mainland China, the empirical results illustrate that digital transformation stimulates the acquisition of diverse knowledge through search scope, while impeding the exploration of existing knowledge through search depth, the following results are shown: (1) Digital transformation promotes the search scope of absorbing heterogeneous knowledge, and inhibits the search depth of reusing existing knowledge; (2) In the external cooperative relationship environment with strong relationship embeddedness, enterprises are more inclined to conduct search depth, while in the external cooperative relationship environment with strong structural embeddedness, enterprises are more inclined to conduct search scope; (3) Digital transformation can have a lasting impact on innovative search behavior. From the perspective of innovation process, this paper provides some theoretical and practical references for the innovation enabling mechanism of digital transformation enterprises.