Improving enterprise innovation performance is key for enterprises to obtain sustainable competitiveness. With the increasingly fierce market competition of technological and product innovation, acquiring external heterogeneous knowledge of alliance enterprises becomes core to improving innovation performance. In this paper, we constructed a theoretical model to present the effect of inter-enterprise knowledge heterogeneity and alliance network governance mechanisms on enterprise innovation performance. We selected high-tech enterprises as the research object for empirical research and reached the following conclusions: (1) Inter-enterprise knowledge heterogeneity has a positive effect on exploratory and exploitative innovation performance, and (2) trust and contract have a moderating effect on the relationship between inter-enterprise knowledge heterogeneity and enterprise innovation performance.

Under China’s distinct policy-driven agglomeration approach, the Chinese industrial park displays a low degree of industrial relevance and weak cooperation among enterprises in the park. The key to solving this problem lies in the guiding role of the park management committee. Accordingly, this study constructs a trilateral evolutionary game model of interenterprise cooperative innovation inside the industrial park under the supervision of the park management committee, leadership of the core enterprises, and with the participation of the small- and medium-sized enterprises. Through simulation analysis, this study explores the influencing factors behind the trilateral cooperative innovation strategy choices. Results show that (1) the park management committee, core enterprises, and small- and medium-sized enterprises have different degrees of influence on each other’s willingness to participate in cooperative innovation; (2) small- and medium-sized enterprises are sensitive to the management committee’s policy support, and core enterprises are sensitive to the management committee’s financial support; (3) core enterprises are more sensitive to penalties and income distribution than small- and medium-sized enterprises; (4) the degree of resource complementarity and trust among enterprises has a profound effect on core enterprises and small- and medium-sized enterprises’ willingness to participate in cooperative innovation.

Small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) establish asymmetric research and development (R&D) alliance with core enterprises to improve innovation efficiency. Unfortunately, the gap in the status and bargaining power between enterprises in such partnerships makes the intellectual property risk situation complicated. While gaining support and assistance from core enterprises, SMEs face the risk of exposing their core knowledge and key resources, which seriously affects the stability of R&D alliance and the sustainability of cooperative innovation. How to protect the intellectual property rights of SMEs in the asymmetric R&D alliance and improve the alliance’s stability is an urgent problem to be solved. Based on the theory of resource dependence and transaction cost, this study uses 260 high‐tech companies participating in the asymmetric R&D alliance as a sample to conduct empirical research from the perspective of SMEs in a weak position. The purpose of this study is to sort out the types of intellectual property risks in the alliance and clarify the relationship between them and the stability of asymmetric R&D alliance. Furthermore, this study examines the moderating effects of contract governance mechanisms and relational contracts to explore effective governance mechanisms at the alliance level. Empirical results show that the intellectual property investment risk and the intellectual property loss risk have a significant negative impact on the stability of asymmetric R&D alliance. The contract governance mechanism negatively moderates the impact of intellectual property investment risk on the stability of the asymmetric R&D alliance. The relationship governance mechanism negatively moderates the impact of intellectual property loss risk on the stability of the asymmetric R&D alliance. The contract and relationship governance mechanism jointly negatively moderate the impact of intellectual property investment risk and loss risk on the stability of the asymmetric R&D alliance.