Toward "Data Empowerment": A Study on the Leapfrogging Mechanisms of Green Innovation Capability in China's National-Level Industrial Parks

Against the strategic backdrop of the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan, which emphasizes industrial system modernization, green and low-carbon transformation, and innovation-driven development, industrial parks have increasingly become critical spatial carriers for promoting high-quality economic growth and green innovation in China. Drawing on platform government theory, this study selects the national-level Mingshui Economic and Technological Development Zone as a case to systematically examine the mechanisms and evolutionary logic underlying the upgrading of green innovation capability in China's national industrial parks. The findings reveal that: (1) the evolution of green innovation capability in China's national industrial parks has undergone three sequential stages, namely institution integration orientation, innovation resource integration, and data-enabled deepening. Each stage exhibits distinct contextual characteristics and driving mechanisms characterized structural reform-driven development, network collaboration-driven development, and value co-creation-driven development; (2) from the perspective of platform government theory, the upgrading trajectory of green innovation capability in China's national industrial parks can be conceptualized as a nonlinear evolutionary process encompassing platform-enabled policy integration, platform-coordinated multi-actor co-governance, and platform-anchored data value creation. The mechanisms driving green innovation capability upgrading differ substantially across stages in both content and organizational form; and (3) the internal logic underlying the upgrading of green innovation capability reflects a progressive transition from a "bureaucratic logic" to an "innovation logic," and ultimately to a "value logic." The theoretical framework developed in this study not only extends the explanatory boundaries of platform government theory, but also uncovers the interactive coupling mechanisms among institutional, organizational, and data-related elements throughout the process of green innovation capability upgrading and evolution in China's national industrial parks. These findings carry important theoretical and practical implications for advancing the green and low-carbon transformation of industrial parks and promoting platform-based digital development in China.