Digital-real industrial technology integration, knowledge interfaces, and firms’ export sophistication

Purpose Manufacturing export upgrading is shifting from scale expansion to a quality-driven stage centered on complex knowledge recombination and the improvement of product technical content. This paper aims to explore whether digital-real industrial technology integration enables firms to access more sophisticated export portfolios, with a view to understanding how the digital economy supports high-quality foreign trade. Design/methodology/approach This paper measures digital-real industrial technology integration using the co-occurrence of digital technology knowledge and industrial technology knowledge within firm patents and examines its effect on firms’ export sophistication. Findings Digital-real industrial technology integration raises firms’ export sophistication. Digital-real industrial technology integration improves export sophistication by promoting external knowledge transactions, strengthening internal digital knowledge stock and facilitating cross-domain knowledge recombination. The effect is more pronounced for state-owned firms, less financially constrained firms, high-tech firms and firms with stronger export bases. Originality/value From the perspective of knowledge integration, this paper shifts the research focus on digitalization and export upgrading toward the impact of the integration of firms’ internal digital technology knowledge and industrial technology knowledge, thereby extending the research boundaries of how digitalization enables export upgrading. Meanwhile, this paper operationalizes abstract knowledge management processes, such as knowledge acquisition, absorption and recombination, into three testable knowledge-interface transmission paths, providing empirical support for how digitalization enables the high-quality development of foreign trade.