An Evolutionary Game Theory Model for Chinese Laggard Firms Technology Catching up

In order to keep the sustainable global developing steps and improve the innovation ability in open innovation platforms, sustainable technology catching up is indispensable in China. However, sometimes the international technology catching up paths, such as international import, FDI, and strategic alliances may not play so significant effect for laggard firms in China at their early stage of catching up on account of their weak absorptive capacity, insufficient complementary assets, and far geographical distance from advanced technologies. Therefore, how do these laggard firms expedite their early-stage sustainable technology catching up availably? Based on the extant paths, from the perspective of open innovation, we put forward a new path named learning-by-technology learning intermediary firms to help those laggard firms improve their technology catching up process and build an evolutionary economics model to capture the evolution process of this system. We gave out the technology learning intermediary firms play different roles such as technology pursuers, technology innovators, and technology transfers at different stages during the laggard firms technology catching up process.