Abstract:The agglomeration and interactive coupling of subjects in the innovation chain of high-tech industrial clusters are the intrinsic foundation for the formation and evolution of cluster innovation capability. In this paper, from the perspective of knowledge ecological coupling, we study the evolution of cooperation strategies among the main bodies of horizontal innovation chain of clusters, construct the evolution game model of cooperation and interaction between the main bodies of horizontal innovation chain of clusters and their neighbours, carry out the stability analysis of the system, and take into account the embeddedness of the network, and carry out the simulation analysis of the dynamic evolution of the cooperation strategies among the main bodies of horizontal innovation chain of clusters with different network sizes. It is found that the degree of knowledge complementarity can promote the evolution of cooperation strategies among subjects of cluster horizontal innovation chain, and there exists a critical value for this promotion, which rises from 0.5 to 0.8 with the increase of network size, but the larger the network size, the slower the speed of network evolution. In addition, the degree of knowledge overlap has an inhibiting effect on the evolution of cooperation strategies between subjects in the horizontal innovation chain of clusters, but there is a lower critical value of 0.4, when the degree of knowledge overlap is lower than the critical value, it can promote the cooperation between subjects in the horizontal innovation chain of clusters; with the increase of the degree of knowledge overlap, the inhibiting effect on the cooperation between subjects in the horizontal innovation chain of clusters increases when the value of knowledge overlap is exceeded, and the effect of the degree of knowledge overlap is not influenced by the size of the network. The effect of knowledge overlap is not affected by the network size. The findings of the study can provide some basis for the formulation of cooperation strategies of horizontal innovation chain in clusters and the layout of industrial clusters by the government.