Export development strategies of IRAN s high-tech industries using Importance performance analysis(IPA).

Research studies show that considering the production potentials of high-tech industries, the export of this group of products is not proportional to the economic capacities of Iran.. This is while, one of the export objectives of the country in upstream documents is to export high-tech goods and get rid of exporting raw materials. Accordingly, this paper aims at identifying the barriers to the development of high-tech industries and assessing their performance, and then, determining their priority in Iran. In this paper the opinions of experts the area of high-tech industries were used to identify the barriers and their importance. Using theme analysis, six main factors (barriers) and twenty important sub-factors in this area were then identified and classified. After that, in order to assess the effect of barriers on the export development, the proper indicators were determined for each sub-factor based on the research literature, and these indicators were formulated in the form of a two-dimensional questionnaire composed of the importance and performance of each of them and were provided to 260 knowledge-based export companies. The collected data were analyzed using MAXQDA and SMART PLS software in the qualitative and quantitative sections, respectively. Finally, the gap between the status quo and the desired status and the barriers to the export development in the high-tech industries were analyzed using the importance-performance matrix, and some solutions were suggested to improve the export development status in Iran.