Three-layered supernetwork evolution model and the application for China-world's top 500 enterprises supernetwork

Abstract

Network of network (NON) or so-called supernetwork extensively exists in the real world. However, so far the definition of NON is not mutually recognized, relevant theory is rather lacking. In order to reveal certain characteristics of NON, we proposed four kinds of three-layered supernetwork evolution models (TLSEM) based on WS small-world and BA scale-free model, and defined two kinds of layer cross-degrees as new measures of cooperative-competition relationship for different layer nodes. The idea and methods of TLSEM are applied to the construction and analysis of China-world's top 500 enterprises supernetworks as a typical empirical example. The analytical results show that the layer cross-degree is better description than other network characteristics, and TLSEM may lay a certain foundation and extend to study more multilevel supernetworks.