Research on the influence of supply chain stability on the innovation ability of enterprises

At a time of increasingly fierce competition in the global economy, corporate innovation is regarded as a key element to gain sustainable competitive ad-vantage, and the stability of the supply chain, as an important link in corpo-rate operations, should not be underestimated in terms of its role in promoting or constraining innovation. This paper analyzes the impact of the stability of up-stream and downstream relationships on the innovation ability of enterpris-es by taking 3,096 A-share listed companies in China from 2013 to 2023 as the re-search object. The findings show that the stability of both suppliers and cus-tom-ers has a U-shaped relationship on firms' innovation capability, and that digital transformation plays a mediating role in the inverted U-shaped relation-ship between supply chain stability and innovation capability. In the heteroge-neity test, the effect of supply chain stability on firms' innovation capability is more significant in large-scale firms and firms in capital-intensive industries. This paper concludes that enterprises should maintain a moderate degree of supply chain stability and adjust their management strategies for supply chain rela-tionships according to their own characteristics in order to effectively en-hance their innovation capability.