Abstract:The development of the digital economy is driven by advances in digital technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence. This paper starts from the policy perspective of digital technology based on the quasi-natural experiments of national-level big data comprehensive pilot zones, examines the impact mechanism of the pilot policies of big data pilot zones on enterprise innovation capacity using provincial-level panel data from 2012-2019 by adopting a double-difference generalized spatial model. It is found that the establishment of big data pilot zones can bring into play policy dividends and significantly enhance the innovation capacity of local enterprises, while the establishment of big data pilot zones also strongly promotes the local industries-universities-research collaboration, and the industries-universities-research collaboration plays a part of intermediary role in the process of empowering the enterprise innovation capacity in big data pilot zones. In addition, the Big Data Pilot Zone has produced significant spillover effects on both local and neighboring regions, highlighting that the demonstration and leading role of the Big Data Pilot Zone is gradually expanding.And the above findings still hold under the counterfactual test conditions of replacing the explanatory variables, change treatment groups and policy shock times, and the study provides a reference for assessing the policy effects of the big data pilot zones, which has important theoretical and practical significance in promoting the development of China's digital technology and the construction of enterprise innovation.