The Strategies of Iran Steel Industry Value Chain upgrading through Innovation System Perspective

The concept of upgrading the value chain is nothing but comparative innovation; meaning only the innovations with a rate higher than that of the competitors lead to upgrading. Also, the competitiveness of the value chain is largely influenced by collaboration of the chain actors. The present article seeks to provide suggestions for application of upgrading strategies to the Iranian steel industry through the perspective of innovation system functions. In this article, through interviewing experts and employing the thematic analysis method, a primary framework was extracted and were then confirmed and corrected by descriptive and inferential statistical methods. The results of the research show that various types of upgrading strategies are influenced by the barriers that can be addressed by the functions and sub-functions of the steel industry innovation system. At the end of the paper, by means of structural-functional analysis of Iran steel innovation system, policy goals and propositions are outlined.