Impact of technology spillovers and subsidies on innovation consortia dynamics

Zheng Yang, Lin Li, Nicholas G. Hall, Yongzeng Lai and Yijiang Zhou

European Journal of Operational Research, 2026, vol. 328, issue 2, 560-573

Abstract: In innovation consortia, governments and enterprises view technology spillovers and subsidies differently, which reduces the effectiveness of policies and undermines cooperation. This work investigates the dynamics of cooperation among leading enterprises (LEs) and small/medium enterprises (SMEs), using an evolutionary game model with intrinsic, extrinsic and mixed strategies. We show that there may exist more than one evolutionary equilibrium of enterprise cooperation under multi-strategy choices. A high subsidy may induce enterprises to speculate and reach a suboptimal evolutionary equilibrium. Furthermore, our findings indicate that SMEs are particularly sensitive to changes in subsidy levels, income distribution ratios, and project income, with their speculative behavior exhibiting a lagging effect. Also, increasing the income distribution ratio of LEs can promote active cooperation between the groups and reduce the speculative tendency of SMEs. This occurs because it magnifies the effect of technology spillover on the income of SMEs and enhances the income of the leading enterprises. Our work improves understanding of cooperative factors and provides new recommendations for government and leading enterprises to improve cooperation and managerial performance.

Keywords: OR in research and development; Innovation consortia; Evolutionary game; Spillover (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:328:y:2026:i:2:p:560-573

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2025.06.031

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