关键词: 互补者创新, 创新型平台治理, 用户购买行为, 策略选择, 演化博弈

Abstract: As key drivers of competitive advantage for innovative platforms, complementors’ choice of innovation strategies are inevitably influenced by both platform governance and heterogeneous user behavior. Therefore, based on a software platform ecosystem, this paper develops a tripartite evolutionary game model incorporating the innovative platform, complementors, and users. By conducting simulation analyses on the sensitivity of key parameters to the strategic choice of each entity, it reveals the dynamic evolutionary process underlying their strategy choice. The findings demonstrate that the primary factor influencing complementors to pursue original innovation is the expected future return generated by such innovation, while the strong governance by the platform companies serves as a secondary mechanism influencing this choice. Measures such as increasing the cost of strong-governance review, lowering the approval rate of imitative-innovation software, and maintaining a reasonable range for the platform’s cost-sharing ratio for promotion can help innovative platforms guide complementors toward original innovation. Although increasing user subsidies has limited influence on complementors’ original innovation decisions and on the platform’s strong-governance efforts, it can effectively improve users’ purchase probability in the early stages of platform development. These findings offer significant practical implications for complementors’ innovation strategy choice and for the formulation of governance strategies by innovative platform enterprises.

Key words: complementor innovation, innovative platform governance, user buying behavior, strategic choice, evolutionary game