Abstract: The theoretical and practical conflicts concerning the relationship between debt financing and innovation performance have existed for a long time. This paper has introduced governance duality theory and enterprises’ life cycle theory as theory explanation, and tested the impact of both relational and contractual governance upon innovation performance around enterprises’ life cycle based on the study of the features and mechanisms of both relational governance and contractual governance of bank debt financing and the innovation risk distribution around enterprises’ life cycle as well. Is has been found out that driven by innovation premium, banks’ relational governance possesses innovation tolerance feature and can advance the constancy of innovation input. While the contractual governance possesses innovation conservation feature, and can help bank control innovation risk. Since the environmental risk brought by innovation activity is distributed in both growing and transforming periods and the moral risk is mainly distributed in the latter one, the contractual governance can boost innovation performance of corporations in growing period, while the boost effect of relational governance has shown in mature period. However, when comes to the transforming period, both of them have shown restraining effect towards innovation performance.

Key words: enterprises&rsquo, life cycle