The Impact of New-Quality Productive Forces on the Growth of Specialized, Refined, Distinctive, and Innovative Enterprises

New-quality productive forces (NQPFs) represent advanced productive forces centered on technological innovation. They may be viewed as relevant to specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative (SRDI) enterprises’ efforts to overcome growth bottlenecks and pursue leapfrog development, and they are also positively associated with high-quality development. This paper uses China’s listed SRDI enterprises from 2015 to 2024 as samples to examine the association between NQPFs and enterprise growth. The results indicate that NQPFs are significantly and positively associated with enterprise growth, with technological innovation playing a partial mediating role: NQPFs are related to growth through technological innovation, while digital transformation positively moderates their moderating effect on innovation. Additionally, this study decomposes NQPFs into labor and production tools. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that labor has a stronger positive association with the growth of SRDI enterprises in the current period, whereas a positive association with production tools becomes more apparent after two periods. Further categorizing SRDI enterprises into three types—technology innovation-oriented, green transformation-oriented, and traditional efficiency-oriented—the results are consistent with the positive association between NQPFs and growth being strongest for technology innovation-oriented enterprises.