Under the background of the new era, the trend of diversification of college students’ group behavior is obvious; the traditional student management mode cannot meet the needs of education and teaching in the new era of colleges and universities, and the reform of student management is imminent. This paper analyzes 245 students from University A in Shanghai using questionnaires to study the differences in their innovation ability among different genders, ages, and educational levels. PLS-SEM and correlation analysis methods were employed to investigate the factors that influence students’ innovation ability. The overall innovative capacity of students is satisfactory, except for the innovative capacity of results, which requires more improvement. In the analysis of differences in innovation ability, each mean value of undergraduate innovation ability is greater than the mean value of specialized innovation ability, such as thinking innovation: undergraduate M=3.795>specialized M=3.642 (P<0.05), which shows that academic qualifications are a part of the influence of students’ innovation ability. Secondly, “the intelligent level of the management team”, “the popularity of the campus network,” and “the interaction degree of intelligent management platform” are significantly correlated with “innovation ability” (P0.01). Among the six influence paths, the degree of interaction of the intelligent platform, the degree of acceptance of management strategies, and the degree of popularization of the campus network indirectly promote students’ innovation ability in a weaker order. Path 1, “Intelligent level of the management team”, has a significant effect on the cultivation of students’ innovative ability, with an effect size of 51.22%.