关键词: 政策组合, 朴素式创新, 演化博弈, 仿真

Abstract: In the post-pandemic era, innovation should be more sustainable: taking more social responsibility, taking into account the environment and resources, and paying more attention to low-income groups and promoting social equity and justice. Frugal innovation originates in emerging markets and is oriented to the BoP (Bottom of Pyramid) group in society. The sustainability, economy and inclusiveness of its process are a powerful response to how to innovate under the macro environment of resource scarcity, environmental degradation, the widening gap between the rich and poor, and the shrinking market. Frugal innovation is conducive to the sustainable development of society by adjusting product design, reconstructing the value chain to reduce costs, reducing a resource waste, opening up low-end markets and alleviating poverty.
After reviewing the literature, we find that the existing studies on policy combination and innovation mostly focus on the innovation performance and innovation behavior of enterprises, and the research methods involve ones such as qualitative analysis, empirical research and game models, and pay more attention to the innovation modes of enterprise independent innovation, green innovation, and collaborative innovation, etc., than the relationship between policy combination and enterprises’ frugal innovation. In the current context of resource scarcity, environmental degradation, the increasing gap between the rich and poor, and the shrinking market, how to choose policies and their combination implementation to promote enterprise’s frugal innovation needs to be further explored.
This paper adopts the evolutionary game theory to construct an evolutionary game model of the government and enterprise to investigate the mechanisms of influence of three policies and their combinations, namely, subsidies, penalties, and information inducement, on enterprise’s frugal innovation. We assume that in the state of nature, the process of frugal innovation exists in a system consisting of two parties, the enterprise and government, both of which follow the basic assumptions of limited rationality and imperfect information. In this system, the enterprise has two strategic choices: engaging in frugal innovation and not engaging in frugal innovation; the government also has two strategic choices: taking policy measures and not taking policy measures. By setting the parameters reflecting the cost-benefit of the government and enterprise, the payoff matrix and replication dynamic equation of the evolutionary game between two parties are obtained. We analyze the equilibrium points and stability of the evolutionary game. Numerical simulations are conducted using MATLAB, and the parameters are assigned to describe the laws of the influence of different policies and their combinations on enterprise’s frugal innovation: one policy itself, a combination of two policies, and of three policies.
The following conclusions are drawn: (1)Policy is a necessary tool for government to promote enterprises to engage in frugal innovation. (2)The effects of the three policies and their combinations on enterprise’s strategy choices vary. ①One single policy is not the best choice for government. ②Compared with one single policy, a combination of two policies is more effective, and this combination should be flexible according to the specific situation. When the combination of subsidies and penalties is taken, subsidies should be the main strategy, followed by penalties; when the combination of subsidies and information inducement is taken, the effect of both will be similar, so government can flexibly adjust the combination according to the actual situation in the implementation process; when the combination of information inducement and penalties is taken, the information inducement policy should be the main strategy to encourage, promote and guide enterprises, while supplementing with penalty policies to regulate enterprise behavior. ③In comparison, a reasonable combination of the three policy tools has the best incentive effect on enterprises. The combination of subsidies, penalties and information inducement policy in a proper proportion will more effectively promote the adoption of frugal innovation.

Key words: policy combination, frugal innovation, evolutionary game, simulation