Designing a policy mix to strengthen the role of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in national innovation system

The variety of functions and tasks expected from the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology (MSRT) to play a proper role in the innovation system requires the design of a mix of policy instruments. Although there are many policy documents and laws that have been approved especially in the last decade and the duties and powers of the MSRT are foreseen in them, previous studies show that the overall performance of Iran's innovation system is not favorable in many aspects. The design of any new policy mix should be done according to the gaps in the previous documents. This study was conducted with the method of content analysis of documents to investigate policy gaps and focused group interviews to have expert opinions about the policy mix for improving the innovation system in the field of science, research, and technology which, according to the identified gaps, consists of 7 macro policies, 25 policy goals and 60 instruments. From the viewpoint of the type of instruments, tools of the type of "regulation", "support for education, research, and human resources", "networking and infrastructure development", "information support and brokerage", "demand, market creation, and government procurement", "financial support, loans, grants" and "Tax incentives, customs exemption" had the largest share in the policy mix, respectively. In terms of the type of instruments, the number of supply-side instruments, direct support instruments, and non-financial instruments are dominant in the designed mix. The internal consistency analysis of the instruments also showed that the proposed policy mix is internally consistent.