*3.2. The Mediating Effect of Enterprise Partner Diversity*

Technological innovation is the process of recombining knowledge elements. The current ebb of globalization has intensified the market competition of Chinese enterprises. At the same time, the first wave of the industrial, scientific, and technological revolution swept in, offering new challenges to the quality and complexity of enterprise innovation. The enterprise's own knowledge elements are difficult to overcome the key core technologies to meet the above challenges [49,50]. Therefore, enterprises need to actively carry out R&D cooperation with various types of subjects to meet the requirements of high-quality innovation.

On the one hand, different types of partners have different advantages such as power and knowledge. Cooperation with the government can gain the support and trust of the government [51–53] and strive for a good external political environment. Cooperation with universities and scientific research centers enhances the degree of enterprise talent team construction [54], which in turn enhances the quality of enterprise innovation. It also allows universities to contribute their specialists, cutting-edge technology, and scientific information [55,56]. Consumer collaboration can help gain timely product feedback and offer fresh ideas for innovation. Diverse partners bring many high-quality external resources and access to knowledge for enterprises, broaden the knowledge base, optimize the original knowledge structure, and provide intellectual support for high-quality innovation [57,58]. Diverse collaborative research and development across departments, fields, and geographies can overcome geographic constraints, utilize several disciplines to solve innovative issues, and produce higher-quality innovation [59]. On the other hand, diversified partners provide enterprises with diversified thinking modes and R&D methods. This can effectively enhance enterprises' knowledge absorption capacity, promote the upgrading of original technologies and processes, and ultimately improve enterprise innovation quality. Therefore, partner diversity has a positive effect on innovation quality [60].

Based on the important role of partner diversity, exploring its antecedents is of great significance for improving innovation quality. TMT experience heterogeneity affects the team's resource acquisition and specialization, which affects the enterprise's partner selection and relationship maintenance. As for TMT functional experience heterogeneity, according to the resource-based theory, TMTs with a strong functional experience heterogeneity have a broader social network and contacts [61,62]. On the one hand, it supplies enterprises with the opportunity to establish cooperative relationships with partners who master different scarce technological resources. On the other hand, it provides enterprises with comprehensive and precise information to help them understand the real situation and benefits of potential partners so as to make the best decision [63,64]. In addition, TMT functional experience heterogeneity enables the team to have a diversified perspective on information processing, which is conducive to improving the team members' ability to perceive and control risks [65]. Moreover, it allows enterprises to coordinate cooperative relationships with different partners, maximize the advantages of cooperative innovation, and improve innovation quality. Therefore, we propose the third hypothesis: Hypothesis 3.

**Hypothesis 3 (H3).** *Partner diversity plays a mediating role between TMT functional experience heterogeneity and enterprise innovation quality. That is, TMT functional experience heterogeneity improves innovation quality by improving partner diversity.*

Members of teams with substantial TMT industrial experience heterogeneity have fairly distinct innovation knowledge bases because different industries have different technological R&D paradigms and innovation points. It is easy to have differences in opinion among members in the selection of partners, which leads to management conflicts and is not conducive to the selection of diversified partners. In addition, high-quality innovation needs to be supported by deep industry experience. Executives may not immerse themselves in a particular industry and become specialists in it due to the conversion of numerous industries. Years of work experience in the same industry has made senior executives enjoy a high reputation, which helps attract more types of partners. In the face of numerous choices, executives rely on long-term industry experience to identify which partners can support enterprise innovation. These are all unattainable due to industry experience heterogeneity. Therefore, teams with strong industrial experience heterogeneity find it challenging to identify the fundamental problems impacting innovation quality and develop diversified partnerships due to the absence of broad knowledge in the industry. Therefore, we propose the fourth hypothesis: Hypothesis 4.

**Hypothesis 4 (H4).** *Partner diversity plays a mediating role between TMT industrial experience heterogeneity and enterprise innovation quality. That is, TMT industrial experience heterogeneity reduces innovation quality by reducing partner diversity.*
