Proposing a Comprehensive Defense Innovation Process for the Iranian Best-Practice - Defense Projects in Islamic Revolution Era

Following the victory of Iranian Islamic Revolution, a large number of foreign experts were deported from defense industries; and also by the imposed war and consequently imposed tough sanctions against Iran, the infirm innovation process in defense industries was halted. Thereupon, extensive efforts were started in innovation process and patterns in defense industries. The main specifications of these efforts were self-determining; take the advantages of the finite technological collaboration opportunities and activities based on try and error. Since there was not any research on typology of evolutionary processes in this period, the current study with the aim of innovation patterns recognition is conducted. To this end, 15 major defense projects which were compatible with determined defense success measures were investigated through conducting deep exploratory interviews with defense experts and executive technicians along with taking advantage of conceptual analysis method in which the concepts, components and innovation process models were extracted. The research validated according to three-front validity method. Finally, 4 different paths of defense innovation were extracted according to classifications of key defense products. Results show that all these paths begin with operational requirement and all had phases of team creation and research foundation. All these paths led to the formation of an industrial and manufacturing foundation. Also the improvement of functional specification and innovation development has occurred.