Analysis and evaluation of innovation ecosystems, a case study of Yazd and Mazandaran

Today, innovation, flexibility and readiness for change are the most important factors for economic development in different countries. Examining the experiences of other countries and the new approaches of the world regarding sustainable development based on innovation, points out that moving towards a knowledge-based economy requires the recognition of innovation as the main factor. On the other hand, innovation is a complex process, and in order to achieve an innovative and sustainable business environment, a set of actors, stakeholders, infrastructures, policies, as well as a set of norms and rules must exist together and be able to interact well with each other as a network. Such a complex environment has a behavior similar to natural ecosystems, where component interacts with each other. Therefore, in recent years, a model has been introduced to describe innovation ecosystems, which is called the rainforest model. In this article, an attempt has been made to describe the behavior of innovation ecosystems from the perspective of this model. This model provides a tool called the rainforest scorecard, which is a suitable measure for evaluating and analyzing innovation ecosystems. In the second half of this article, the evaluation and analysis of two innovation ecosystems of Yazd and Mazandaran provinces have been done using this model. The results of this survey show that the Yazd innovation ecosystem is in a much better condition in terms of hardware than the software aspect and the culture that dominates the ecosystem. But in Mazandaran, both the hardware and software parameters of the ecosystem are more or less similar to each other and need to be strengthened.