Abstract: Abstract: Along with intensive competitions in the business world, manufacture firms need pay more attention to the cooperation with their suppliers than before, and meanwhile, knowledge has become firms’ important resource. So the cooperative knowledge creation between enterprises and thier supplies have become more and more important. For certain firms, suppliers act different roles. There may be heterogeneity among different suppliers in the cooperative knowledge creation. The difference of merchandise provided by suppliers express their different roles, whether and how upstream suppliers’ different roles impact their cooperation in knowledge creation with downstream firms is analyzed. Adopting US auto manufacturing industry as the subject, and using USPTO’s online patent data as proxy for the knowledge creation activities, the issues is empirically analyzed. Results reveal suppliers who provide components, comparing with those who provide manufacture equipments, are more likely take part in the cooperation of knowledge creation with downstream firms; the suppliers who provide important components, compaing with those who provide unimportant components, are more likely take part in the cooperation of knowledge creation with downstream firms.

Key words: supply chain management, cooperation, knowledge creation, auto industry, patent data