Aligning innovation strategies and the business environment to improve business performance in the plastics industry

Whereas the productivity generated by implementing innovation in firms for competitive advantage and ultimately having a better performance is the result of the interaction between the business environment, innovation strategies, and corporate capabilities; And that so far, significant studies have not been performed on the interaction of the business environment (as an external factor) and innovation strategies on firm performance; Therefore, the main objective of this research was to investigate the impact of a firm's business performance by aligning innovation strategies (two dimensions of "product innovation" and "process innovation") with the business environment (within the three factors of "dynamism", "competitiveness", and "technological change").Using the data obtained from the questionnaire - from experts of Iranian plastics manufacturing companies - and finally modeling, and analyzing the data by the fuzzy inference system in MATLAB software using the method of Mamdani implication; The study shows that in this industry, the process innovation will have a greater impact on business performance than product innovation. furthermore, technological changes have a greater impact on business performance than dynamism and competitiveness. Overall, this study illustrated the strategic alignment between technological change and process innovation strategy in improving business performance. These results necessitate the targeted selection of innovation strategy based on different environmental conditions for firms.