Whether and how innovation investment affects high-quality economic development has been the focus of attention in recent years.Theoretically expounds how innovation investment influences high-quality economic development through industrial structure upgrading, and empirically tests the above influence mechanism and effect by means of the mediating effect model with the data of 30 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions from 2008 to 2017 as samples.The results show that innovation investment can promote high-quality economic development.Innovation investment is significantly positively correlated with industrial structure upgrading.Industrial structure upgrading plays a completely intermediary role between innovation investment and high-quality economic development, that is, innovation investment influences high-quality economic development by influencing industrial structure upgrading.The influence of innovation investment in different regions on the quality of economic development is different, among which, the influence of innovation investment in western regions is stronger, and the intermediary effect of industrial structure upgrading is more obvious.