The optimal knowledge-sharing strategy for digital platform owners and third-party developers

Knowledge sharing in the digital platform ecosystem is important for the entire system to remain innovative and thrive. However, the research on the knowledge-sharing behaviour and optimal strategy of the platform owner and third-party developer in the platform ecosystem is lacking. This study employs a differential game model to explore the optimal knowledge-sharing effort and revenue levels for each platform owner and third-party developer and the optimal revenue for the whole ecosystem in three scenarios: a Nash noncooperative game, a Stackelberg game, and a cooperative game. The results show that the knowledge decay, the cost and revenue of knowledge sharing, and the knowledge sharing ability of participants have important impacts on the knowledge sharing behaviour of participants. Platform owners can improve the knowledge-sharing efforts of the third-party developers in the form of subsidy, while improving the optimal returns for both parties and the whole system. In the cooperative game scenario, the payoff of the participants is strictly better than that in the non-cooperative game scenarios. Finally, based on these conclusions, this paper presents the optimal knowledge sharing strategy for all participants in the platform ecosystem.