modeling factors affecting international entrepreneurial opportunities recognition in Iranian knowledge-based companies with ISM method

In today economy, knowledge-based companies have distinguished position and play a key role as the engine of technology-based economic growth in leading societies. These businesses are prone to looking beyond national borders because of their potential for competitive advantage due to their unique knowledge, Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen their presence in the international business market.In addition, the national law of supporting the development of knowledge-based products, has emphasized the implementation of export development program and internationalization of knowledge-based companies. Therefore, in this exploratory mixed research, in the first step, the findings of previous studies on effective variables for identifying international entrepreneurial opportunities were listed. In the next step, with in-depth interviews with experts and content analysis, using MaxQDA software, dimensions, key categories and components were identified, updated and localized. Based on the findings of the qualitative stage, the key influential categories are: personality traits and individual capabilities of the entrepreneur, environmental factors of the country of origin and destination, and the capabilities of the entrepreneurial firm whose validity was confirmed by the Delphi-fuzzy method. In the final stage, the levels of key categories and the relationships between them were determined and introduced by interpretive structural modeling (ISM).