The Value of Digital Technology Innovation:From the M&A Perspective and Machine Learning Methods
Digital technology innovation is the driving force for the development of the digital economy,and M&A is an efficient way for enterprises to acquire digital technology and undergo digital transformation.With the rapid development of digital technology innovation,including core technologies such as artificial intelligence(AI),blockchain,cloud computing,big data,and Internet of Things,a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is unfolding.Despite the rapid development of digital technology innovation,there is limited understanding of whether it brings value to enterprises,especially in emerging market countries.China's economy is in a transition to high-quality development,and the potential value of digital technology innovation for enterprises,as well as which types of digital technology innovations are more conducive to enhancing firm value,remains uncertain.This study utilizes the Word2Vec algorithm to construct a digital patent vocabulary for identifying digital technology innovation.By using machine learning models to classify digital technology patents,this study explores the heterogeneous effects of different categories of digital technology on enterprise value.This paper selects the M&A events of China's listed enterprises as buyers from 2011 to 2020 as the research samples.This study finds that the more digital technology innovation the target companies have,the greater the increase in the market value of the acquiring companies,as evidenced by a significant increase in cumulative abnormal returns generated by the M&As;the digital technologies owned by target companies have a long-term empowering effect,significantly improving the production efficiency,digital technology innovation,and business model innovation of acquiring companies;and stronger intellectual property protection,higher analyst attention,and the presence of CTO serve as external and internal factors for acquiring companies,making the enhancement effect of digital technology more pronounced.In addition,the study on the value enhancement effect of different categories of digital technology finds that cloud computing and communication network technology have a greater value enhancement effect on the acquiring companies.Industry-specific research shows that AI and cloud computing are more effective to the machinery and equipment manufacturing industry,while security,cloud computing,and big data bring greater value to the light manufacturing industry,indicating that most firms may still be at the early stages of digitization.The results indicate that it is necessary to strengthen independent R&D and innovation of digital technologies,promote the integration of various industries with digital technologies,and create a service environment that supports digitization to comprehensively enhance the value of digital technology innovation.This study innovatively explores the value of digital technology innovation from the perspective of M&A,which expands relevant research on digital technology,provides new ideas for measuring the value of innovation,as well as provides policy reference for strengthening the integration of digital technology with the real economy.
digital technologymergers and acquisitionsmachine learning
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
