Intelligent manufacturing inherently embodies the techno-economic characteristics commonly associated with general information technologies, such as permeability, substitutability, and synergy. Yet when deployed in manufacturing, its adoption typically entails prolonged experimentation and validation, giving rise to delays and heterogeneous outcomes in both implementation and performance. Much of the existing literature asks whether intelligent manufacturing enhances enterprises’ innovation efficiency, fueling broader debates over productivity. The more fundamental question, however, is when and for which types of enterprises intelligent manufacturing enhances innovation efficiency—that is, the question of its effectiveness. Based on data from A-share listed manufacturing companies over the period 2010–2023, this paper examines the impact of intelligent manufacturing on enterprises’ innovation efficiency from the perspective of the enterprise life cycle. The empirical results show that intelligent manufacturing, on the whole, improves enterprises’ innovation efficiency. From the life cycle perspective, intelligent manufacturing exerts a positive effect on enterprises in the mature stage, but has no significant impact on enterprises in the growth or decline stages. Differences in innovation incentives, R&D capabilities, and organizational characteristics across life cycle stages are the main reasons for this pattern. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that intelligent manufacturing improves innovation efficiency among mature-stage non-state owned enterprises, high-technology enterprises, and technology-intensive enterprises, while exerting no significant effect on other types or stages of enterprises. In terms of the underlying mechanism, intelligent manufacturing enhances enterprises’ innovation efficiency by strengthening their knowledge absorptive capacity. The findings of this paper offer policy implications for promoting intelligent manufacturing in support of boosting China’s strength in manufacturing.

In the context of digital transformation, corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance plays a critical role in promoting open green innovation. Drawing on data from A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2022 in China, this paper examines the impact of ESG performance on open green innovation during the digital transformation. The results reveal that good ESG performance significantly promotes enterprises’ open green innovation, and this conclusion remains valid after several robustness tests. Moreover, the positive effect is more pronounced in regions with higher levels of digital economy development and among enterprises with greater digitization. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that ESG performance more strongly promotes open green innovation in three types of enterprises: high-tech enterprises, those in high-trust regions, and those with strict financing constraints. Based on these findings, enterprises should establish modern ESG management systems, fully leverage the dividends of regional digital economy development, and actively leverage digital transformation to enhance open green innovation ecosystems and ESG capability building.

Service-oriented manufacturing is an important trend in the development of the manufacturing industry. Accelerating the development of service-oriented manufacturing is of great significance for building a modern industrial system, making China a strong manufacturing country, and improving its global industrial competitiveness. With the development of digital technology, service-oriented manufacturing has become a data-intensive production and service process. Data are widely applied in typical scenarios such as research and development, production, delivery to users, and operation and maintenance. Through data insights, software definition, command and control, real-time data streaming and aggregation, it helps to optimize business decisions, achieve economies of scale, enhance flexibility, improve service responsiveness, and unleash value-creation capabilities. This can comprehensively improve the operational performance of service-oriented manufacturing. To further accelerate the development of service-oriented manufacturing, it is necessary to focus on shaping the advantages of manufacturing data factors, increasing the supply of manufacturing data, enhancing the innovation of data technologies and data security, accelerating the research and application of data technology standards, and promoting cross-border data flows.

Corporate venture capital (CVC) has emerged as a critical vehicle for integrating industrial operations with financial capital, enabling enterprises to pursue strategic synergy and value creation. The selection of investment models and the green supply chain integration are increasingly pivotal strategies for leveraging capital to drive sustainability and low-carbon transformation. Drawing on the theoretical framework of resource orchestration and co-evolution, this paper examines Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL) as a typical case to explore the dynamic interplay between its CVC model selection and green supply chain integration strategy. The findings reveal that (1) policy regulation, technological innovation, and market competition act as environmental selection pressures that catalyze the co-evolution of CVC initiatives and green business integration; (2) environmental selection logic reshapes supply chain architecture through renewed resource orchestration, while organizational adaptation logic guides the alignment of CVC models, together driving an evolutionary path of “technological breakthrough–economies of scale–ecosystem formation;” and (3) CVC enhances immediate supply chain integration by strengthening resource coordination, while accumulated intertemporal supply chain experience refines investment strategy, establishing a mutually reinforcing evolutionary loop. Accordingly, enterprises should dynamically align their CVC models with green business strategies, build responsive mechanisms across policy, technology, and market domains, and improve strategic agility through anticipatory resource deployment and ecological breakthroughs, advancing the sustainable development of industrial and supply chains.

In the digital economy era, the operating logic of manufacturing enterprises has changed from product-driven to service-driven, and digital servitization has become an important realization path of the service-driven logic. To gain insight into the emerging phenomenon of digital servitization, this paper selects SANY Group as the case companyto analyze the connotation and composition of digital servitization and reveal the impact mechanism of differentiated data endowments on digital servitization of manufacturing enterprises. This paper finds the following: (1) The digital servitization of a manufacturing enterprise usually goes through three stages: product + service, product × service, and product-service integration, which are also known as digital extended services, digital customized services, and digital ecosystem services; (2) differentiated data endowments that are mainly based on product data, user data, and platform data constitute the key driving factor for the digital servitization of manufacturing enterprises; (3) data affordance behaviors, which mainly include data-pipeline affordance behaviors, data-insight affordance behaviors, and data-governance affordance behaviors, offer the key path for differentiated data endowments to influence the digital servitization of manufacturing enterprises. This paper deconstructs the digital servitization modes and constructs a theoretical model that describes the transmission among differentiated data endowments, data affordance behaviors, and digital servitization. It offers new perspectives and pathways for research on digital servitization, as well as valuable managerial insights for Chinese manufacturing enterprises seeking to overcome growth limitations and expand their value creation space through digital servitization innovation.