According to the panel data of 11 provinces (including two municipalities) in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) for 2011–2020, we empirically test the influence of digital finance on the structural upgrade of industries of the YREB using the least squares dummy variable estimation (LSDV) of the fixed effect model (FEM). R&D innovation is taken as the mediating variable to explore the mediating effect of R&D innovation in digital finance and industrial structural upgrading of the YREB. The empirical results indicate that the advancement of digital finance is able to advance upgrading the industrial structure of the YREB, and its promotion effectiveness has regional heterogeneity. Digital finance plays the largest role in accelerating industrial structural upgrading downstream of the YREB, followed by the midstream. The upstream plays the smallest role; R&D innovation has some mediating effects in digital finance, promoting structural upgrading of industries of the YREB. Therefore, we propose accelerating the development of digital finance, improving the digital financial system, and promoting regional coordinated regional development. Moreover, we propose to raise the R&D innovation level, further advance the industrial upgrading of YREB, advance the coordinated development of the YREB, and achieve common prosperity.

With the rapid increase of market competition pressure, enterprises’ collaborative innovation plays a more prominent role in competitive advantage. This paper aims to explore how the enterprise–science community can achieve sustainable collaborative value co-creation. Taking the Maoduoli Group as a sample, using the single case study method and grounded theory, a structural model of the enterprise–science community collaborative value co-creation mechanism is constructed. The proposed model is based on the value logic of “advocating value—creating value—delivering value—acquiring value”, which explains how the enterprise–scientific community collaborative value co-creation model is formed, how it is implemented, how it is delivered to customers, and the overall process of jointly harvesting value at last. The findings are as follows: First, government support, market demand, and entrepreneurial spirit are the internal and external factors for the enterprise–science community to develop collaborative value co-creation; secondly, the synergy mechanism of the enterprise–science community is to realize mutual activities such as joint research and development, a joint publication of papers, sharing of research results, joint research and development activities, and joint teaching practice through means of capital investment, concept support, and technical support. Third, the synergy mechanism of the enterprise–science community can realize the value of the economic and scientific research and the ecological and social benefits (narrow sense), and continuously feed back to further promote a deeper level of collaborative value co-creation of the enterprise–science community. This paper introduces the dimension of the scientific community, forms a special construct, and focuses on the collaborative value co-creation model of the enterprise–scientific community, which fills the gap in this research direction, and also provides theoretical support and practical guidance for the collaborative value co-creation model of the enterprise–scientific community.