Identify open innovation challenges in small and medium-sized businesses based on the stages of innovation projects

Today, small and medium enterprises are recognized as one of the areas that have a high potential for national and regional development and Help improve local technology and develop local entrepreneurs. Open innovation has become widely regarded as a key issue in business and academia. There is a need to use open innovation to increase the competitiveness of companies indoestic and foreign markets. Traditional small and medium sized enterprises, as one of these sector, must also be able to respond to these increasing changes . The purpose of this study is to identify the challenges of open innovation in traditional small and medium-sized businesses. This research is qualitative in terms of type (multiple case study), fundamental in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of methodology. Therefore, semi-structured interviews have been conducted with 21 members of the staff of 7 traditional small and medium companies that have a history of participating in pre-competition partnerships with industry and academia. The results showed that lack of planning for project partners, inappropriate innovation strategy, unknown partners, inconsistency of goals, lack of social trust, time pressure, lack of financial resources, Inadequate information and control systems, redefining goals, ignoring partners' efforts, bureaucracy and administrative work, lack of inappropriate policies in order to accept advanced innovation and failure to achieve the desired goals were identified as key challenges of this study.