Imitative innovation or independent innovation strategic choice of emerging economies in non-cooperative innovation competition

The importance of knowledge and technology is self-evident, especially the core technology of key nodes in the industrial chain, which will change the country's status in the supply chain, and even the national economic security. This scenario has led to a global non-cooperative innovation competition. In order to ensure the safety of local industrial chain and shorten the technological distance with developed countries, emerging economies can adopt imitative innovation by observing the core technologies from developed countries, or choose independent innovation strategy. How should emerging economies make the choice? We analyze this problem by establishing a dynamic non-cooperative technology development model. The research results show that when the innovation capacity gap between emerging economies and developed regions is large, the choice of imitation strategy is highly necessary. And when the gap is small, the independent innovation strategy can be selected. In addition, due to the existence of both domestic and foreign markets, developed countries can adopt strict policies to restrict the sale of products containing core technologies to overseas markets to limit the spillover of important technologies. We also consider the impact of policies that limit technology spillovers and show the impact of local market capacity in emerging economies.