Innovation is a long-cycle endeavor characterized by sustained knowledge accumulation. Within this context, innovation resilience—the capacity to sustain innovative activities under high uncertainty—becomes critical. It not only helps maintain innovation momentum and improve innovation efficiency but also ultimately supports organizational resilience. Given the increasingly turbulent and complex external environment, a pivotal question arises: Can digital transformation enhance enterprise innovation resilience? Specifically, can it better equip firms to withstand disruptions and adapt to change, thereby ensuring the continuity and long-term growth of their innovation endeavors? Addressing this question holds significant theoretical and practical importance. Utilizing data from listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2009 to 2024, this paper provides a systematic examination of the impact of digital transformation on enterprise innovation resilience and explores the underlying mechanisms driving this relationship. The principal findings are as follows: (1) Digital transformation exerts a significantly positive effect on innovation resilience. This strengthening effect is primarily attributable to the application of digital technologies rather than their development. (2) Mechanism analysis reveals three key pathways through which digital transformation fosters resilience: enhanced resource integration capability, reduced managerial uncertainty perception, and heightened innovation optimism. (3) Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that compared with the other enterprises, the promoting effect of digital transformation is more substantial among non-high-tech industries, firms operating in competitive markets, and non-state-owned enterprises. Compared with the existing literature, the marginal contributions of this study are threefold. First, while most existing studies focus on how digital transformation enhances operational efficiency and innovation performance under relatively stable conditions, research on its role in fostering organizational resilience—particularly the ability to sustain innovation in volatile environments—remains scarce. As digital transformation has become essential for enterprises to gain and maintain competitive advantages, this study examines its effect on innovation resilience within a general analytical framework. It further tests the heterogeneous effects across dimensions such as industry technological intensity, industry competitiveness, and ownership type, thereby deepening the theoretical understanding of the micro-level enabling effects of digital transformation from a resilience perspective. Second, through mechanism analysis, this paper identifies three transmission channels: enhanced resource integration capability, alleviated uncertainty perception, and stimulated managerial innovation optimism. These pathways help unravel the “black box” of how digital transformation influences corporate innovation in turbulent environments, enriching the theoretical discourse on its firm-level empowerment mechanisms. Third, by distinguishing between digital technology development and digital technology application, this study examines their differential effects on innovation resilience. The findings offer strategic insights for enterprises, suggesting how to better coordinate the development and application of digital technologies during transformation to fully leverage digital transformation to boost innovation. The conclusions elucidate the internal mechanisms and boundary conditions through which digital transformation influences enterprise innovation resilience. They provide a decision-making reference for strengthening the enabling effect of digital transformation in uncertain environments, promoting the synergistic advancement of digital transformation and innovation-driven development, and ultimately contributing to the achievement of high-level technological self-reliance.