The digital innovation capability serves as a pivotal source for firms to acquire and uphold sustainable competitive ad-vantages in the era of digital economy.However,its evolutionary logic and formation mechanism have not yet been fully ex-plored.Hence,drawing upon the theory of innovation ecosystem,this paper investigated the dynamic evolutionary process and driving mechanism of core firms'digital innovation capability.The findings are as follows:first,within the firm innovation eco-system,the digital innovation capability of core firms can be divided into collaborative digital innovation capability and unique digital innovation capability,and its development process has undergone three stages:cultivation,formation and promotion.Sec-ond,the collaboration mechanism among multiple entities is an essential prerequisite for the development of core firms'digital in-novation capabilities,which can be divided into distributed collaboration and integrated collaboration,each driving the develop-ment of different types of digital innovation capabilities.Third,knowledge coupling is the driving force for the development of core firms'digital innovation capability,which reflects the internal mechanism of multi-subject collaboration on the formation of firms'digital innovation capability.Loose knowledge coupling builds a bridge between distributed collaboration and collaborative digital innovation capabilities,while tight knowledge coupling builds a bridge between integrated collaboration and unique digital innovation capabilities.The research conclusion analyzes the formation mechanism of firm digital innovation capability from the new perspective of multi-agent collaboration,which not only enriches the theoretical literature of firm digital innovation capabili-ty,but also provides practical reference for firms to effectively develop digital innovation capability.
enterprise innovation ecosystemcollaboration mechanismenterprise digital innovation capabilityknowledge cou-pling