Exploring the Organizational Capabilities of Four Knowldege- Based Firms in the Technology’s Incubator of Sharif University

Development of science and technology has been a main focus of Iranian policy makers in recent years. Knowledge based companies have been considered as a key player in this respect. However, Iranian policy making system is suffering from a lack of sophisticated understanding rooted in empirical evidences of critical factors influencing the performance of domestic knowledge based companies. This dissertation aims to provide an initial ground by studying the organizational capabilities which have influenced the success of such firms and comparing them with organizational capabilities which are mentioned in the related literature. For this purpose, four companies which are supposed to be successful knowledge based companies by the Sharif Advanced Technologies Incubator have been studied. The comparative analysis offers an understanding of, First, the capabilities which all of them have been learnt, second, the capabilities which lack of them has imposed a challenge for some, next, the capabilities that have been mentioned in the literature but not having them is not considered as an issue for these companies and finally the capabilities that are important for some, but not for others and the factors that may explain them.