Abstract
Interfirm cooperation can be seen as a significant and effective way for exploring radical innovation. In this article, a framework of interfirm cooperation, with a core manufacture and upstream counterparties in industry, and its evolving mechanism in the reverse-chain radical innovation are established from the perspective of the fundamental role played by knowledge collaboration. Then, an evolution model of interfirm cooperation is constructed on the theory of vibration mechanics, and its evolutionary dynamics is explored through numerical and simulation analysis mainly on the key factors of knowledge potential difference and knowledge rent-seeking behaviour within the firms. The findings show that, if there is no knowledge-based rent-seeking behaviour from the upstream firms, the probable innovative performance from the interfirm cooperation should vary for the knowledge potential difference between the cooperative firms, but can come to a certain equilibrium state. Meanwhile, if the knowledge rent-seeking behaviour does exist, knowledge potential difference would lead the innovative performance evolving ultimately in divergence. What’s more, the negative effect caused by the rent-seeking behaviour could be alleviated or weakened to some extent by the excitation mechanisms presented by the core firms in the cooperation system. Therefore, the drawn conclusions should be useful for the core manufactures’ implementing various strategies to maintain or enhance the cooperation for radical innovation in industry.
Highlights
Radical innovation has been conceptualized as substantive changes in technology that advance frontiers by much more than the existing rate of progress [1, 2]
The collaboration progress is directly affected by the cooperators’ attribute, whose knowledge-based capability, collaborative willingness, collaborative ability, and other features are divergent objectively and subjectively. us, it leads to the possible influential factors to the cooperation that are knowledge potential difference, knowledge-based rent-seeking behaviour, and others, which could result in the complex dynamic effect of interfirm cooperation in the radical innovation system
Considering that the interfirm cooperation should be seen as a series of interactions among the firms in some industry chain, and the emerging innovation should be roughly seen as a set of output performance from the complex interactions, the theory of vibration mechanics, which is originated from the science of physics, is applied to model the interfirm cooperation system in complex science so as to explore how the system evolves dynamically and track the possible innovation performance
Summary
Radical innovation has been conceptualized as substantive changes in technology that advance frontiers by much more than the existing rate of progress [1, 2]. Erefore, it is crucial to preserve the quantity and diversity of knowledge for innovation system, and the cooperation formation is driven by its probability to succeed in terms of knowledge generation and innovation, as well as the proximity of the potential partner [42, 43] On this basis, no matter how the knowledge being presented, the effectiveness of the cooperation should be influenced by the subjective factors of each firm absolutely, especially on the cognitive distance, investment allocation of dealing with the knowledge, and the motivation or willingness to participate in that [44], which results in the firms selecting partners on sort of balanced principle of neither too close in the knowledge space (to facilitate novelty) nor too far away (to foster understanding ability). From the theory of complex science and vibration mechanics in physics, the mechanism of knowledge collaboration and the pattern of the interfirm cooperation in reverse-chain radical innovation are established, comprising core high-tech manufacturers and the upstream suppliers.
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