Technology-sharing strategy and incentive mechanism for R&D teams of manufacturing enterprises

Abstract

Technology innovation is a necessary condition for manufacturing enterprises to maintain competitiveness. As the central part of the national innovation system, enterprises must avoid redundant research and development (R&D) input and blind competition; therefore, it is crucial to guide technology-sharing of R&D teams in enterprises. An evolutionary game model for the analysis of agents’ strategy choice between upstream and downstream R&D teams is established. It shows that the technology-sharing strategy chosen by the R&D teams is closely related to the sharable coefficient of technology, and also closely related to the benefits obtained through free-riding. As the sharable coefficient of technology of upstream and downstream R&D teams A and B is continuously changing, four evolutionary stable equilibrium strategies appear in turn. The coefficient of synergy benefits, the capacity of technology absorption, and the sharable coefficient of technology have a positive correlation with the sum of direct benefits and synergy benefits; the technology transfer costs, the capability difference costs, risk factors, and the relative amount of technology-sharing are the critical factors negatively affecting the technology-sharing of the upstream and downstream R&D teams. A specific compensation mechanism can reduce the cost of sharing and increase the willingness to share technology. At the same time, as the internal incentive factors changes, the technology-sharing system tends to converge to {technology-sharing, technology-sharing}, thus providing decision support for the formulation and effective evaluation of manufacturing innovation policies.