靠近竞争者是助力还是阻力:后发企业追赶路径分析

Close to competitors is power or resistance:Analysis of catch-up trajectory for latecomers

后发企业以赶超行业内具有核心能力和优质创新资源的在位企业为战略目标。为了探究后发企业的追赶路径,本研究运用演化博弈理论,从异质性资源的模仿性与替代性视角,构建了两阶段演化博弈模型,试图探究后发企业与竞争者之间的动态关系如何帮助其实现赶超。通过数值仿真模拟不同情形下的博弈模型,本研究发现:后发企业更倾向于采取靠近在位企业的模仿式创新策略,而在位企业不会竭力抵制后发企业的模仿行为,反而会采取鼓励模仿策略。另外,当补位企业也参与其中时,后发企业和在位企业的策略选择并没有改变,但是当补位企业选择参与策略的概率增加时,这有利于促进后发企业和在位企业快速收敛于稳定策略均衡点,即后发企业的策略选择最终收敛于“模仿式创新”策略,在位企业的策略选择最终收敛于“鼓励模仿”策略,补位企业的策略选择最终收敛于“参与”策略。

The research on latecomers and its catch-up has yielded some interesting conclusions.Some scholars propose that latecomers should adjust their strategies according to the strategic actions of the superior incumbent that the latecomers should get close to.Through imitative innovation strategy,latecomers can improve their competitive advantage.Meanwhile,such strategy is conducive to reducing risk of decision-making,accumulating valuable innovation resources,and improving innovation capacity.However,other scholars questioned this view.In their view,getting close to the superior incumbent will reduce the innovation vitality,and latecomers should not only increase the intensity of R&D but also achieve catch-up through independent innovation strategy.Only with core technologies and innovation capabilities can latecomers surpass the superior incumbent.In addition,increasing studies indicate that both imitative innovation strategy and independent innovation strategy have a significant impact on the promotion of innovation performance,and the relationship between two strategies is either complementary or alternative.Latecomers should dynamically adjust the imitative innovation strategy and the independent innovation strategy according to the market condition at different development stages.The superior incumbent is a leader in the industry with intensive innovation capability and high-quality innovation resources,and its heterogeneous resources are always the important resources imitated by latecomers.For avoiding latecomers threatening its market position,the superior incumbent often takes a series of strategies to resist latecomers imitating.However,the practice shows that blindly resisting the imitative behavior of latecomers cannot bring long-term benefits for the superior incumbent.When the superior incumbent tries its best to prevent latecomers from imitating,it forces latecomers to develop independent innovation for survival.In that way,latecomers would develop new product with high substitutability.Even if the superior incumbent wins in competing with the latecomers,will it still win when competing with the new competitor?Whether the existence of new competitor affects the strategy that the superior incumbent adopts?The discussion of above research questions has both theoretical significance and practical value.To solve these problems,this study constructs a two-stage evolutionary game model.This model can intuitively explain how the strategy is adjusted over time by the superior incumbent,latecomers,and the potential entrant(new competitor),as well as how the game model achieves an evolutionary stable strategy(ESS)in the dynamic and complex process of evolving competition.In the first stage,the evolutionary game model consists of the superior incumbent and the latecomers.The cooperation between them is impossible,as the profit for one inevitably means the loss for the other,which is in line with the classic zero-sum game.Furthermore,according to the complex scenario of catch-up,the potential entrant is introduced into the second stage of the evolutionary game model,in order to explore how potential entrant affects the ESS of the tripartite game model and its evolutionary trajectory.Compared with the first stage of game model,the relationships among three game participants have changed from strong competition to dynamic interaction.Finally,this study draws the following results:Latecomers tend to adopt imitative innovation strategy to achieve catch-up,while the superior incumbent often encourages the latecomers to imitate their peripheral heterogeneous resources instead of resisting their imitative behavior.In addition,the existence of the potential entrant does not change the strategies of the superior incumbent and latecomers.However,along with the probability of potential entrant launching participation strategy increases,it will promote the superior incumbent and latecomers to quickly converge to the ESS.Finally,the evolutionary game model is stable at(1,0,1).That means,the latecomers prefer the“imitative innovation”strategy,the superior incumbent prefers the“encouraging imitation”strategy,and the potential entrant prefers the“participation”strategy.From the perspective of heterogeneous resources and catch-up scenarios,this study explores the dynamic adjustment process of strategy among the superior incumbent,latecomers,and potential entrant.The results provide a full explanation on“what the specific catch-up trajectory for latecomers is”as well as“whether the existence of potential entrant in the evolutionary game model will change the evolution process,evolution trajectory,and evolutionary stability strategy”.It not only enriches the catch-up theory but also expands the research framework for catch-up.In addition,this study can provide practical guidance for the latecomers to achieve catch-up.