Abstract: The ambiguous or inconsistent categorization of peers has significantly compromised the reference value of existing studies in this field. By focusing on industrial and geographic peers and their interaction, our study introduces an integrated approach that simultaneously assesses geographic intra-industry and inter-industry peers. We tested our hypotheses by analyzing corporate strategic imitation in innovation, with particular attention to peer effects associated with the establishment of China’s academician workstations, which involve elite scientists in promoting technology transfer. In particular, we constructed a novel multilevel database encompassing academician-, firm-, and region-level characteristics across China’s prefecture-level cities from 2009 to 2019. Fixed-effects logit analyses largely supported our hypotheses and yielded the following results. First, 7772 academician workstations were established during the study period. Eastern China accounted for more workstations than other regions, with Shandong and Zhejiang provinces ranking highest. Second, academician workstations were concentrated in five manufacturing industries: chemical raw materials and chemical manufacturing, pharmaceutical manufacturing, special equipment manufacturing, computer, communication and other electronic equipment manufacturing, and general equipment manufacturing. The industrial diversity of academician workstations exhibited distinct regional variation, with the eastern region demonstrating significantly greater industrial variety than the northeastern, northwestern, and southwestern regions. Third, the scarcity of intra-city innovation resources substantially reduces the likelihood that geographic intra-industry peers will imitate the focal city’s innovation strategy. Fourth, geographic inter-industry peers are highly likely to imitate the focal city’s innovation strategy under institutional pressure. Fifth, heterogeneity tests indicated that academicians’ birthplaces, a city’s administrative level, its innovation vitality, its financial support for innovation, and the region in which it is located significantly influence firms’ innovation strategy imitation. In summary, we propose a fine-grained geographic-industry peer classification and provide a more nuanced theoretical lens for analyzing the complex drivers of enterprise strategic imitation, thereby deepening the research on peer effects.