Knowledge service decision making in business incubators based on the supernetwork model

Liming Zhao, Haihong Zhang and Wenqing Wu

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2017, vol. 479, issue C, 249-264

Abstract: As valuable resources for incubating firms, knowledge resources have received gradually increasing attention from all types of business incubators, and business incubators use a variety of knowledge services to stimulate rapid growth in incubating firms. Based on previous research, we generalize the knowledge transfer and knowledge networking services of two main forms of knowledge services and further divide knowledge transfer services into knowledge depth services and knowledge breadth services. Then, we construct the business incubators’ knowledge supernetwork model, describe the evolution mechanism among heterogeneous agents and utilize a simulation to explore the performance variance of different business incubators’ knowledge services. The simulation results show that knowledge stock increases faster when business incubators are able to provide knowledge services to more incubating firms and that the degree of discrepancy in the knowledge stock increases during the process of knowledge growth. Further, knowledge transfer services lead to greater differences in the knowledge structure, while knowledge networking services lead to smaller differences. Regarding the two types of knowledge transfer services, knowledge depth services are more conducive to knowledge growth than knowledge breadth services, but knowledge depth services lead to greater gaps in knowledge stocks and greater differences in knowledge structures. Overall, it is optimal for business incubators to select a single knowledge service or portfolio strategy based on the amount of time and energy expended on the two types of knowledge services.

Keywords: Business incubator; Supernetwork; Knowledge transfer service; Knowledge networking service; Optimal decision (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437117302364
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:479:y:2017:i:c:p:249-264

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2017.03.013

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().