Typology of Innovation behavior of provinces of Iran: A consideration of social factors

Authors

Associate Prof., Department of Information Technology Management, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Innovation systems literature refuses similar policies to the innovation-based development across different types of regions; no one size fits all. Furthermore, the theoretical literature, specially the broad approach to innovation systems has largely advocated the impact of social factors such as trust and believes on innovation behavior of regions. Iran is a vast country, includes a great diversity of ethnicity and culture, which make it a proper case to study the impact of social factors on regional innovation behavior. Considering some social factors, such as trust and collectivism; and some social actions, such as interactive learning, we provide a regional innovation behavior typology in this paper. We study similarity and difference in regional socio-economical properties of 28 provinces of Iran in two 4-years periods and compare their innovation performance. The typology forms the basis for region-specific innovation policies.

Keywords