Determinants of the innovation efficiency of strategic emerging enterprises: evidence from the robust frontiers

Strategic emerging industries facilitate the deep integration of emerging technolo-gies and strategic industries. Exploring the factors of the innovation efficiency of strategic emerging industries are of great significance to effectively implement the strategy of innovation-driven development and enhance national core competitive-ness. In order to identify the linear and nonlinear influence of factors on innovation efficiency (separability hypothesis is taken into account), we apply a nonparametric robust frontier for empirical analysis. The empirical analysis relies on the sample of 186 strategic emerging enterprises in China. The results suggest that enterprise characteristics are the dominant factors of the efficiency of enterprise innovation. Among them, high-tech enterprises and enterprise size positively impact enterprise innovation, while the influence of enterprise age on innovation efficiency is nonlin-ear. According to the influence law of enterprise age, the enterprise life cycle can be divided into several periods, including survival, rapid growth, maturity, recession and metamorphosis. The innovation efficiency of enterprises is significantly dif-ferent among industries, as the digital economy industry shows significantly lower level than the high-end equipment industry and new materials industry do. Simi-larly, the tertiary industry efficiency is significantly lower than that of the secondary industry. The innovation efficiency of strategic emerging enterprises has regional heterogeneity. Finally, this study provides policy suggestions for improvement of innovation efficiency of strategic emerging industries from the perspectives of gov-ernment management and enterprise management.