Top management teams (TMTs) play an important role in enterprises. How to improve the cooperation of TMTs in the process of the mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprise is a new era theme and currently a key objective in China. In this paper, we use evolutionary game theory to research the dynamic behavior of TMTs from the perspective of knowledge input and knowledge flow. We construct the evolutionary game model from the dimensions of knowledge input, knowledge flow, cooperation costs, government reward, and government penalty firstly, then we explore the strategy selection on knowledge input or not in the cooperation of TMTs between state-owned enterprise and private enterprise. Finally, we discuss the model's local stability and perform a simulation analysis of the factors that can influence the stability of the model. The results show that the final strategy choices of TMTs between two parties are related to not only the initial payment matrix constructed but also the selection of the initial parameters of the partners: Under different situations, the strategy evolution result will be stable at (input, not input), (not input, input) and (input, input). Increasing the degree of knowledge flow, government reward, and government penalty and reducing the cooperation costs between state-owned enterprise and private enterprise can promote the TMTs' cooperation in the process of the mixed ownership reform. Based on the conclusions, we put forward relevant suggestions for enterprises and the government. We hope that this research can provide some sustainable solutions to improve the cooperation of the TMTs between stateowned and private enterprise. INDEX TERMS Mixed ownership reform; top management teams; state-owned enterprise; knowledge flow; cooperative behavior; evolutionary game