Proposing a Model for Opening Iran's Defense Innovation System

Evolution of innovation management literature and Sectoral innovation systems illustrate a tremendous paradigm shift in the innovation context from closed innovation context to an open one. Defense innovation context of defense division show the essentiality of taking an open approach toward creation, development and diffusion of innovation as well. In this research, we propose a model for opening Iran’s defense innovation system for the first time. By reviewing the literature and conductiong exploratory interviews with experts, dimensions and indexes for the model were extracted. An initial 7 Likert-scale questionnaire is designed then its internal consistency confirmed by the help of 30 experts and also by computing the Cronbach’s alpha while validated according to experts’ views. The developed questionnaire was answered by 245 defense innovation experts and the model’s dimensions and indexes were confirmed with confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling using LISREL software.The results show that for opening the defense innovation system, we have to take the following actions respectively: making the behavior of the main innovation players more open, taking a more open approach toward strategy making process, activating the mediator players in the section, and eventually designing and implementing more open interaction and relationship process between defense innovation players and non-defense innovation players.