Abstract: In the era of the digital economy, service innovation paradigms are rapidly shifting toward adaptability. Facing the challenges of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, manufacturing enterprises must leverage adaptive service innovation as a strategic fulcrum to build core competitiveness and advance industrial transformation and upgrading. However, existing research has not sufficiently explained how digital empowerment influences adaptive service innovation in manufacturing through multi-stage transmission mechanisms, particularly with respect to the systematic identification of key mediating pathways and boundary conditions. Grounded in dynamic capability theory, this study develops a theoretical model elucidating the impact of digital empowerment on adaptive service innovation in manufacturing enterprises. The model examines the mediating roles of strategic flexibility and supply chain agility, as well as the moderating effects of environmental turbulence. Empirical results reveal that: (1) digital empowerment exerts a significant positive influence on adaptive service innovation; (2) strategic flexibility and supply chain agility partially mediate the relationship between digital empowerment and adaptive service innovation; and (3) market turbulence positively moderates the link between digital empowerment and supply chain agility, while technological turbulence positively moderates the link between digital empowerment and strategic flexibility. By systematically uncovering the mechanisms through which digital empowerment drives adaptive service innovation, this study enriches theoretical understanding of the “digitalization-servitization-innovation” transformation pathway and offers new explanatory insights for research on the digital servitization transformation of manufacturing enterprises.

Key words: digital empowerment, service adaptability innovation, strategic flexibility, supply chain agility, environmental turbulence