Identifying and Ranking the National Technology Exchange System (Technomart) Development Barriers in Iran

In developing countries, using technomart as a mechanism for the development and management of technology has been taken into consideration for about three decades and pursued by the relevant organizations. But the problem is that, in some countries (such as the author's country Iran) this structure has not been very useful or successful up until now regarding to its primary goals. In other words, technomart functions were limited to information dissemination and have not been converted from a push system to a pull one. Some of these effective factors are known, but others still remain unknown. In this article, we have aimed to evaluate the barriers of implementation and development of technomart regarding to its primary and functional goals as a pool system. This has been done through scrutinizing the current model and previous studies, especially with a focus on the current barriers to the creation of a technology market such as cultural, economic and political barriers. This will be done through studying and renewing the current technomart models with the emphasis on developing countries. In this research we also identify barriers better and then demomstrate the importance and impact of each one in order to increase the accuracy and reliability of future planning. In the first stage, consideration is given to identifying strengths and weaknesses of technomarts and similar structures which are active in the field of technology management. The results of the first stage and also expert comments show us that developing technomarts from a push system to a pull one has two kinds of barriers, categorized in to seven constructs. Internal barriers are related to strategies and promoting activity constructs, while external barriers consist of the network, economy, national innovation system, technology- related services and legal infrastructure constructs. After identifying the constructs as obstacles, using stepwise regression and Pearson correlation analysis methods, the importance of each factor and priority of each construct is determined. Also technomart success factors are shown as a separate construct.