How enterprises in the digital age can “break through the cocoon and become new”: a study based on social media strategic capability

Purpose Social media is booming in the digital age, and its rich availability provides many opportunities for companies to innovate across borders. In reality, how enterprises use social media to achieve cross-border innovation also faces important challenges such as breaking path dependency. Design/methodology/approach This paper explores how social media can facilitate cross-border innovation from the perspective of strategic capability, combined with the path dependency theory and attention-based view. Hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrap method are adopted to test the hypotheses based on survey data provided by 173 firms in China. Findings The findings show a positive relationship between social media strategic capability and cross-border innovation, with path dependency playing a mediating role. In addition, two internal and external contextual factors, namely customer embeddedness and competitive pressure, play moderating roles, with customer embeddedness negatively moderating the negative relationship between social media strategic capability and path dependency and competitive pressure negatively moderating the negative relationship between path dependency and cross-border innovation. Originality/value These findings provide not only new insights into social media and cross-border innovation but also theoretical guidance on how companies can effectively use social media in practice.