Exploring configurations of industrial internet platforms’ empowerment for the integration of industrial and innovation chains: An fsQCA approach

Amid the challenges arising from deglobalization and market volatility, modernizing industrial systems requires the integration of industrial and innovation chains (“dual-chain integration”). Industrial internet platforms (IIP) have demonstrated potential to facilitate dual-chain integration, but their empowerment mechanisms remain theoretically and practically underspecified. To address this research gap, this study examines how platform capabilities drive dual-chain integration through a configuration analysis of 46 IIP cases. Applying the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework with necessary condition analysis (NCA) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), we identify three distinct platform empowerment patterns: technology-organization internal drive, multi-core resonance dominant, and ecological embedded leap. Resource integration capability consistently emerges as a universal empowerment factor across all pathways. Under specific objective conditions, the innovation capabilities of architecture and industry foundation of IIP can achieve high levels of dual-chain integration through equivalent substitutions. This study constructs a context-adaptive theoretical framework, providing a new analytical paradigm for addressing the pathway dependency issues in empowering the dual-chain integration of IIP.