Evolutionary Game of Knowledge Sharing in the Advanced Manufacturing Industry

Introduction

With the rapid development of the knowledge economy and Internet technology, advanced manufacturing has gradually become one of the industries that every country has to pay attention to. Compared with traditional manufacturing, advanced manufacturing has high scientific and technological content, high added-value, and low energy consumption. The advanced manufacturing industry is knowledge-intensive, and no company will have all the knowledge resources needed for its production. Because of the variability and uncertainty of market demand, it is impossible to satisfy the market demand by relying on the knowledge resources of enterprises themselves. Knowledge sharing is a good choice for advanced manufacturing enterprises to reduce their innovation risks. The competitiveness of industries mainly comes from intangible assets rather than tangible assets, such as knowledge resources and the ability of enterprises to absorb heterogeneous knowledge resources (Zareie and Navimipour, 2016). To survive in the fierce industrial competition, many advanced manufacturing companies have joined the industrial clusters. Enterprises in the industrial clusters have established closer business contacts through knowledge sharing. Industrial clusters are conducive to forming a good division of labor and collaboration between enterprises and promote the formation of a close network of relationships between each other. The ability of enterprises to diffuse, acquire and apply innovative knowledge reflects the upgrading of industrial clusters. (He, 2014). Industrial clusters can share the complementary knowledge resources needed by enterprises; it improves regional production efficiency and promotes the rapid development of the industrial economy. Knowledge sharing encourages the mobility of knowledge in industrial clusters; it is the source of rapid enterprise development and industrial innovation and upgrading (Freeman, 1991). In the advanced manufacturing industry cluster, knowledge sharing between enterprises has become the most critical link, enabling the entire industry to develop efficiently and healthily.

From an economic perspective, knowledge is heterogeneous, scarce, complementary and incomplete. As a commodity, knowledge can be reused, and the marginal benefit of knowledge acquisition is increasing for enterprises. Although these characteristics of knowledge resources are positive factors that promote knowledge sharing between enterprises, knowledge sharing between organizations also has certain costs, such as learning costs, time costs, technology transfer costs, human resources costs, and risk costs. When the companies in the industrial cluster believe that the benefits of knowledge sharing are greater than or equal to the benefits of non-sharing, companies will share knowledge. Since the goal of an enterprise is to maximize revenue, when knowledge sharing can bring benefits and risks to the enterprise, the game between enterprises will also appear. Classical game theory assumes completely rational people and completely opens information. However, in the actual situation, the two sides of the game can't achieve complete information symmetry and complete rationality. Therefore, this study adopts the theory of evolutionary game rather than classical game theory. The evolutionary game emphasizes a dynamic equilibrium and stable deduction process. It does not require the players of the game to be completely rational and the information between each other is completely symmetrical. Therefore, the evolutionary game is more in line with actual research.

Based on the perspective of knowledge sharing, this paper constructs an evolutionary game model among advanced manufacturing enterprises, and analyzes the dynamic evolution process of enterprises. What is more, figure out the main factors that affect the evolution of the enterprise strategy, and proposes corresponding optimization suggestions.