School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, China
Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence have spawned numerous AI companies. Yet, AI’s role in facilitating corporate innovation and competence remains understudied. Based on innovation theories, the resource-based view, and the organizational change theory, we develop a framework that integrates organizational AI resources, AI innovation capability, and corporate performance to depict how AI empowers corporate innovation and competence. Utilizing panel data from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2022, we identify 17,016 company-year observations and examine the impact of companies’ AI resources on their corporate performance and the mediating role of AI innovation capability. The results reveal that companies’ AI resources, including data, human, and strategic resources, enhance their corporate performance, and that AI innovation capability mediates the impact of AI resources on corporate performance. Further, we provide evidence that a greater extent of human-machine collaboration improves corporate performance by enhancing AI innovation capabilities, as the interaction term between data resources and human resources shows a positive impact. Our research is among the first studies to characterize the role of AI in corporate innovation and competence with a large-N empirical analysis based on a third-party database and it contributes to innovation theories and AI development.
