Technology assessment provides the requirements for decision-making with regard to development of technological capabilities. This paper presents a model for assessment of technological capability level of firms. This model was tested on 10 manufacturers of automotive parts in Iran. We choose some technology capability assessment models as the basis of our assessment model. Then, using field study by questionnaire and site visit, these firms' capability level was assessed. Results indicate that in most cases there are lack of appropriate soft aspects of technological capability like managerial, human and knowledge aspects, smooth and balanced technological capability, and appropriate tacit knowledge.
Purpose
This paper aims at identifying knowledge creation and diffusion challenges and explaining their causal relationship in renewable energy technologies in Iran.
Design/methodology/approach
By reviewing literature of renewable energy technologies development, key knowledge creation and diffusion challenges are extracted. Then, the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method is used to investigate the cause-effect relationships as well as the influence structure of aforementioned challenges in Iran.
Findings
The results indicate that lack of specialized higher education and research institutions (C4), limited international product development and technological cooperation with international pioneer firms (C8), insufficient international research interactions of institutions and academic research centres (C6), tight and temporary subsidies to domestic institutes (C13), limited and non-systematic government grants (C14), insufficient tax incentives with low impact on investment (C12), weak enforcement of intellectual property rights (C5), low number and relatively poor performance of NGOs and scientific and trade associations (C19) and the limited number of conferences, workshops, meetings and specialized journals (C15) are among the most instrumental challenges of knowledge creation and diffusion of renewable energy technologies development in Iran.
Originality/value
This paper identifies knowledge creation and diffusion challenges of renewable energy technologies development in Iran, which is applicable for other developing countries. It also analyses the interrelationship and causal effect between challenges which is a neglected issue in the literature and has beneficial theoretical and policy implications.
Apart from “future-shaping” tools (such as forecasting, scenario planning, etc.), many countries also use “backward-looking” approaches to develop long-term strategies for switching to a new economic model. A retrospective assessment of accomplishments and failures (or policy learning, PL) helps learn lessons, and improve the effectiveness of innovation policy. Using the example of Iran, the paper examines the use of PL to assess key initiatives in the field of science, technology, and innovation over the past two decades. Field research allowed to identify the main policy goals, analyse their evolution and the changes in the perception of previously made decisions by politicians themselves. The active use of technical and conceptual PL indicates a relative progress in adjusting the policy vector. At the same time partisan policy learning remains common, applied to legitimise the current course, which indicates insufficient maturity of Iran’s political system (as is the case in many other developing countries). It is concluded that to make real progress and increase the effectiveness of innovation policy, technical, conceptual, and social PL should be applied, while keeping the use of partisan policy learning at the minimum.
Determining the success factors of the product acquisition process has initialized extensive researches at the level of institutions and organizations. However, few studies have been done about the success requirements of knowledge management in the product acquisition process. Therefore, in this research it is attempted to deal with this topic with a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative studies. At the qualitative stage by the use of the studies and the half-organized interviews the key knowledge which was very important for the success of each of the product acquisition phases was determined. Then this knowledge was translated to knowledge requirements, and at the next stage, a new model of assessing the situation of each of these requirements in product acquisition phases was presented. Finally, each situation was assessed with the knowledge management cycle approach in above-mentioned organizations.The results indicate that the knowledge production step in all of the product acquisition phases has an inappropriate situation, but the sharing process has an inappropriate situation in all phases except the knowledge production phase.
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