Abstract: Enhancing innovation quality is the only path for Chinese firms to overcome technological bottlenecks. Starting from the perspective of the special flow of technology talents in the workplace, based on a unique dataset of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2018, this study empirically tests the impact of technology talent's workplace return on the quality of corporate innovation. Research shows that the return of technology talents to the workplace can significantly improve the quality of innovation in enterprises. The mechanism analysis results indicate that the return of technology talents to the workplace mainly promotes the improvement of enterprise innovation quality through two mechanisms: knowledge diversification and cooperation network expansion. The heterogeneity analysis results indicate that the impact of the return of technology talents to the workplace on the innovation quality of enterprises is more significant in samples with weak intellectual property protection, non technology intensive, and large enterprise scale. The economic consequence analysis shows that the return of technology talents to the workplace has a significant positive impact on the disclosure of descriptive innovation by enterprises. Therefore, enterprises should strive to attract technology talents to return to the workplace and actively give full play to the returning technology talents in the process of technological innovation. The government should play a guiding and supportive role, encourage enterprises to recruit departing technology talents in the process of promoting orderly talent flow, and create a favorable external environment for returning technology talents to play their role in the workplace.

Key words: return of technology talents to the workplace, innovation quality, collaborative networks, knowledge diversification