Agent-Based Modeling on Technological Innovation as an Evolutionary Process

摘要

In this paper, a multi-agent model is built to simulate the process of technological innovation based on the widely accepted theory that technological innovation can be looked as an evolutionary process. The actors in the simulation include producers and large number of customers. Every producer will produce several types of products. With several functions (fitness components), each product is composed of several design elements. Kauffman's famous NK model is used to deal with the genotype-phenotype map between design elements and functions. Besides the constructional selection which can be illustrated by the NK model, we add environmental selection into the simulation and explored the technological innovation as the result of the interaction between these two kinds of selection. Based on the model and simulation, several kinds of patterns of technological innovation are discussed.