The knowledge management strategy and the formation of innovative networks in emerging industries

This paper presents an agent-based simulation model with local network externality to analyze strategic interactions over investment on new economic knowledge. R&D knowledge flows and spillovers are the results of non-cooperative games played between neighboring agents in the model. The model demonstrates a situation where no agents have incentives to hide their economic knowledge, a situation that is observed in open source software development projects. The likelihood of obtaining a stable situation where new economic knowledge is openly shared is increased when heterogeneity of agents is introduced.