Does digital innovation help firms navigate the COVID-19 pandemic? Evidence from China

Using manually collected data, we explore the effects of digital innovation (DI) on firm resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings show that during the pandemic, firms with high levels of DI performed significantly better than others. This effect was more pronounced for firms with high exposure to COVID-19 or geographically distant supply chains. Further, mechanism analysis finds that DI mitigated the negative impact of COVID-19 by reducing internal coordination costs and improving the speed of external supply chain response. Additional analysis shows that the more firms with strong DI capabilities, the faster the economic recovery after the pandemic.