In recent years, some scholars have tried to follow the logic of the upper echelons theory to investigate the relationship between the overseas experience of executives and the innovation decision-making of enterprises. However, there are few empirical studies on how the returnee executives exert positive effects on enterprise innovation. Especially in the context of domestic-international dual circulation development, enterprises are among the many active subjects to promote regional high-quality development. Hence, it is worthy of further study how the dual social capital advantages of returnee executives play a role in innovation incentives and how their human capital values are invested to lead innovation-driven development. Based on the upper echelons theory and the social capital theory, this paper discusses the effects and mechanisms of returnee executives on regional high-quality development from a perspective of enterprise technology innovation, and inspects the regulating effect of enterprise ownership on their relationship and the mediating effect of resource slackness. Based on the theoretical analyses of human capital advantages and enterprise innovation investments, three research hypotheses are proposed:H1, returnee executives are more willing to invest in R&D as compared with local executives; H2, the positive effects of returnee executives on investment in R&D is more obvious in private enterprises than in state-owned enterprises; H3, resource slackness has a mediating effect between returnee executives and enterprise innovation, and returnee executives increase the R&D investment through increasing the degree of resource slackness. The data of China's A-share listed companies in Shenzhen Stock Exchange and Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2008 to 2016 is obtained from the WIND database and the CSMAR database as the research object. Five research models are built to measure the impact of returnee executives on enterprise technology innovation, to inspect the regulating effect of the enterprise ownership on the relationship between returnee executives and enterprise technology innovation, and to investigate the mediating effect of resource slackness between returnee executives and enterprise technology innovation, respectively. The results show that there is a positive correlation between returnee executives and enterprise technology innovation level, and the effect is very significant. R&D investments of enterprises increase significantly, and technological innovation improves significantly after returnee executives are hired. The positive R&D investment of returnee executives has more obvious effects on promoting enterprise technology innovation in private enterprises than in state-owned enterprises. Returnee executives promote the level of R&D investment and hence enterprise technology innovation through increasing the enterprise resource slackness. Further regression analyses show that the enterprise technology innovation level of enterprises employing returnee executives is significantly higher than that of enterprises without returnee executives. The greater the proportion of returnee executives in the executive team, the more capable of promoting enterprise technology innovation. Moreover, the study finds out that compared with the early overseas study experiences, the overseas work experiences of returnee executives have more significant effects on promoting regional enterprise technology innovation. The conclusions reveal the promoting effect of innovation-driven leadership of returnee executives as a unique human capital on enterprise technology innovation from the perspective of enterprise innovation and put forward the development strategy of actively introducing overseas talents from the bottom-up dimension of enterprises.