As an important factor for firms to conduct international strategy, innovation ability is a crucial topic to investigate how innovation ability affects firm's exporting. This paper proposes three relevant propositions that can be empirically examined by micro-level data of Chinese manufacturing firms. We can get that:a) Innovation ability affects weather the products of firms could match the preference of target consumers and then affects firms' exporting; b) The firms with strong innovation ability can break through fixed costs of exporting by enhancing its productivity level and then upgrade to exporters; c) Compared with foreign firms, domestic firms are more dependent on innovation ability in exporting.