Governance Mechanisms and Realization Pathways of Collaborative Innovation in Platform Ecosystems From an Ecological Embeddedness Perspective: A Tripartite Evolutionary Game Approach

ABSTRACT In an increasingly complex digital economy, platform ecosystems have emerged as a critical organizational form for promoting collaborative innovation and value co‐creation. Ecological embeddedness not only facilitates deep integration between platform enterprises and complementary firms in terms of technological and resource dimensions but also provides essential support for the sustained improvement of overall ecosystem value. Against this backdrop, this study aims to examine the logic of strategic choices and the governance mechanisms of platform enterprises, technology‐based startups, and incumbent firms in facilitating collaborative innovation within platform ecosystems. From an ecological embeddedness perspective, this study develops an evolutionary game model for a platform ecosystem encompassing multiple heterogeneous actors. It systematically analyzes the conditions under which evolutionary stability emerges when different participants adopt active collaborative innovation strategies. By employing numerical simulations, it further explores the mechanisms through which key factors—such as initial cooperative willingness, resource‐sharing levels, benefit distribution mechanisms, strength of organizational relationships, and regulatory and guiding mechanisms—influence the evolutionary trajectories of collaborative innovation. On this basis, the study proposes governance strategies to facilitate the implementation pathways for collaborative innovation within platform ecosystems. The results indicate that a high initial cooperative willingness among actors facilitates the initiation of collaborative innovation and promotes the evolution of cooperative relationships toward a stable equilibrium. Achieving multi‐actor ecological embedded collaborative innovation requires three critical conditions: (1) Efficient ecological empowerment and knowledge diffusion mechanisms must be established to enhance resource‐sharing levels; (2) benefit distribution should be equitable and designed to optimize overall ecological gains; and (3) the platform‐centric ecological innovation network must be strengthened to consolidate the organizational foundation for cross‐actor collaboration. The absence of any of these conditions may disrupt the evolutionary path of collaborative innovation or even result in failure of cooperation. Meanwhile, further analysis reveals that regulatory mechanisms significantly limit passive strategic choices by increasing penalties for breaches of agreement and reducing opportunistic benefits, whereas guiding mechanisms enhance the motivation of innovation actors to participate through appropriately calibrated incentives. However, when incentives exceed a certain threshold, innovation activities may fail. Overall, scientifically designed governance mechanisms contribute to the improvement of collaboration efficiency among platform ecosystem members and enhance system performance. The findings of this study not only enrich the theoretical framework of embedded innovation and collaborative innovation in platform ecosystems but also provide valuable insights for designing governance mechanisms in the embedded innovation practices of technology‐based startups and platform enterprises.