Technical founders, digital transformation and corporate technological innovation: empirical evidence from listed companies in China’s STAR market

Abstract Technology entrepreneurship and corporate innovation are important for the development of indigenous innovation. In the digital age, founders are subject to fundamental changes in their strategy choices, which in turn affect corporate innovation performance. This paper aims to explore the strategic choices adopted by technical founders of listed companies in China’s STAR market to reap the rewards of innovation in a digital context. Based on the annual reports of 124 listed companies in China’s STAR Market, this paper applies machine learning methods to quantify digital transformation of enterprises, and empirically analyzes the relationship between technical founders and innovation performance by constructing a moderated mediating model. Our results show that companies with technical founders are more likely to adopt digital transformation and thus show better innovation performance. In terms of heterogeneity, the empirical results demonstrate that firms with technical founders show better performance in digital transformation, followed in turn by those with business founders and academic founders. Both the positive relationship between enterprise digital transformation and innovation performance and the mediating effect of digital transformation are positively moderated by venture capital or private equity support. The findings reveal the microscopic mechanism of the role of technology-based founders on corporate innovation performance and hence have practical implications for promoting corporate digital transformation and enhancing firm technological innovation.