Exploring the bottleneck of Iran's national innovation system by TOC thinking process

Abstract

This paper contributes to identify systematic problems in NIS using Thinking Process (TOC-TP) and to eliminate the bottlenecks, which results in improving the innovation process and efficiency of NIS. The Case study in this research is the NIS of Iran. The national documents of the innovation system were studied and all problems of NIS mentioned in documents were gathered. The causal relationships between the systematic problems were identified by the survey and grouped into 6 components by Exploratory Factor Analysis: weakness in technology diffusion mechanisms, the lack of centralized governance on science and technology policy, the government's pivotal role as an executor in education and research, weak laws and regulations in the field of research and technology, the lack of adequate financial resources in R&D and the lack of any perspective on the creation of wealth and entrepreneurship among the actors of research and technology. Finally the bottleneck of Iran's NIS was recognized by Thinking Process tools: the small participation of private sector in research and education system as the result of government's pivotal role as an executor of Iran's national innovation system. So the researchers could diagnose the policy gaps related to the identified bottlenecks.

Keywords:

• NIS
• bottleneck
• TOC thinking process
• Iran

JEL Classification:

• O31
• O32
• N75

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mansoureh Abdi

Mansoureh ABDI has a PhD degree in S&T policy from Tarbiat Modares University. She received her BSc in Industrial Engineering from BuAli Sina University and her MSc in Industrial Engineering from Tarbiat Modares University. Her main research interests are science and technology policy (special for NIS) and strategy formulating (in macro level and soft areas such as Elites Communication and Consultation). Her thesis was about policy extracting to promote NIS in Iran by theory of constraints.

Alireza Hasanzadeh

Alireza HASANZADEH is an Associated Professor in the Department of Information Technology Management, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran. He has PhD in Systems Management. He is working on information technology impacts, strategic information systems, technologies for knowledge management, etc.

Ali-Asghar Fani

Ali-Asghar FANI is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Administration, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran. His PhD is organizational behavior and human resource management. His main research interests are economics of education, reengineering of education management, intelligent schools, reinforcing R&D morale sense in education etc.

Seyed Hassan Ghodsi Poor

Seyed Hassan GHODSI POOR is a Professor in Industrial Engineering Department, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. He is an expert in science and technology policy, strategy formulating using hard techniques in soft areas such as analytic hierarchy process, decision support system and multi-criteria decision making in policy extracting. He has several books (in Farsi) and tens of papers (in English and Farsi) in these areas.