فصلنامه رشد فناوری
پیاپی 45 (زمستان 1394)

Due to the Research and Technology Organizations (RTOs) lack of relation with industry and their tendency to do activities more closer to the universities, which had led to their inefficiency in carrying out their primary mission, since thirty years ago, governments in many countries by cuts the RTOs governmental budget have directed them to financing through industry research budgets, and in some cases, through cut the state budgets, the RTOs were forced to acquiring income (in order to self-sufficiency). Accordingly, another type of research organizations as Contract Research Organizations (CRO) was formed.
In this paper, in order to answer the question of whether a contract research model is consistent with the RTOs mission in technology development or not. First, the issue had reviewed historically and then the process of contract research and independent research and their characteristics were investigated and based on that the conclusions and recommendations are offered.
The results shows that carrying out the technology development research by the RTOs in the form of a contract research between the industry firms and the RTOs, due to conflict with the requirements of technology development and working conditions of the RTOs is not a good choice and independent research approach is recommended as the most suitable method.

Nowadays, having the ability of foresight and decision-making is essential for any organization. Advanced and successful organizations have chosen knowledge-oriented strategy to survive in the competitive and rapidly changing environments. Handling of changes and good decision making about them plays a central role in the future success or failure of organizations. Two important concepts that have important role in managers’ decision makings are Business Intelligence (BI) and Knowledge Management (KM). Business intelligence and knowledge management are relative concepts to each other .The relations between these concepts has not been yet offered clearly and determining the boundary of these two concepts is difficult for managers. Researchers have considered different links between them. In this paper, business intelligence and knowledge management will be defined and then different viewpoints about the type of relationship between these concepts will be expressed. In general, it is recognized that knowledge management and business intelligence both have common and same goal which is improving decision-making process and finally improving the business performance. Implementation and execution of these concepts would consider as organization's competitive advantage. However, knowledge management, including both explicit and tacit knowledge, and also considers unstructured data, while business intelligence generally focuses on explicit knowledge. Finally, concluded that, knowledge management and business intelligence should be integrated regardless of the type of relationship between them, because each has advantages and disadvantages.

The role of knowledge and science are paid attention in national development because creating expertise and improving the Total factor productivity of production. Furthermore, the position of technology and knowledge is considered vital as endogenous factors in this development process. On the other hand, the conversion of knowledge into product and service will meet the needs of different communities. Knowledge-based companies are included as institutions that work as factories converting knowledge into product and service. Although, knowledge-based companies create sustainable knowledge-based economy and development of indigenous knowledge in many countries, but in accordance with the country's 20-year outlook and in terms of quality and quantity, they are not in ideal situation and are faced with challenges in their own development process. This research aims at identifying challenges facing knowledge-based companies located in Yazd's Science and Technology Park of Eghbal and prioritizing these challenges using Artificial Neural Network. The case study includes 137 managers and senior staff of these companies. Fifty nine challenges obtained from related literatures and experts’ opinions have been compiled in a questionnare and distributed among target population. One hundred and twenty eight collected questionnairs were validated by BP Artificial Neural Network and confirmed with MSE=2.0332 and challenges were prioritized with Artificial Neural Networks Radial Basis Function. The research proved that 19 of 59 challenges were priority among which economic problems of the country, industry and domestic markets recession and government’s unbalanced support policies can be pointed out.

Knowledge is a valuable resource and strategic factor and also an asset. So providing good and qualified products and services without management and use of this valuable resource, is difficult and sometimes impossible. Knowledge management has become one of the most important activities in today's organizations to improve and maintain competitive advantage. The ultimate goal of knowledge management is the operation and development of knowledge assets to achieve the goals and create added value for the organization. It is obvious that knowledge management is crucial in the formulation of business strategy for gaining competitive advantage. Therefore identifying factors affecting the implementation of knowledge management based on business strategy is very important. In this study, 55 factors affecting the implementation of knowledge management extracted. Then by using Delphi method and the adoption of experts opinion, their relationships with business strategies were identified. On this basis, 35 factors in 6 dimensions were identified: Leadership, Strategic, Infrastructure, Structure, Cultural and Scientific Dimension. Among the identified dimensions, leadership dimension was more important than the other dimensions. Strategic and Scientific dimensions are the next one and 64 percent of the identified factors were confirmed.

Nowadays, according to development of academic research in the field of high technologies, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a pivotal role in stimulating entrepreneurial growth and economic prosperity. So it is necessary to answer the question that what factors causes this firms growth and success. The main purpose of this study is identifying the affecting factors of knowledge based firms growth and success by use of qualitative study. In terms of purpose, this study is practical and the analytical methodology was used. For this purpose semi-structured interview by using thematic analyzing is conducted. Experts whom interviewed are 20
executive managers of top and successful knowledge based firms located in Isfahan Science and Technology Town (ISTT) (Sheikh Bahai) in the last three years. The review of literature, and the results of interviews showed 3main themes that classify the affecting factors of knowledge based firms growth and success to 3 levels: individual, organizational and environmental. Based on the results, it seems that government and environmental conditions play a more important role in providing appropriate context for knowledge based firms’ growth and success. According to the interviews, view government and environmental conditions has main role in success and durability of knowledge based firms and spin-offs. Finally, based on the results, referring to existing shortcomings in the field of this firm’s activity and the main emphases of the experts, the necessary considerations for effective factors reinforcement has provided.

The experiences of the experts are the most important sources of knowledge and institutional training. Sometimes it is hard or impossible to describe tacit knowledge. Experts are very busy and valuable people. The separation of their work for the process of acquiring knowledge, should not be long. Acquisition of tacit knowledge is costly and time taking process. In large organizations, experts are not centralized in a building or a city. Knowledge users may also have broad geographical scope. The techniques of knowledge will not be able to have a performance alone. So, to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the Organization's knowledge acquisition project, storytelling and the scenario techniques for the acquisition and dissemination of experiences of experts are combined. With the compilation of the necessary requirements in order to create a model based on storytelling, validation of the proposed model is outlined. There is no research on effective parameters and system requirements for the acquisition of experience. Therefore, to implement the model these features must be described and prioritized. Increase the efficiency of the knowledge techniques, create the model comparison system, gain experience and increase the participation of experts and other agents of knowledge in organizations, are the results of this research. This model suggests the structured acquisition of tacit knowledge.

Digital communication industries with high growth rates in innovation have globally advanced and rapidly expanded. The industry has been extensively changing in the worldwide. Hence, it significantly changes the business models according to the technology of new generation in digital communication. New generation technology with the emergence of creative destruction context, left the organizations by two compulsory alternatives, compliance with new system and success or destruction of the systems will be the result. Unlike many articles that considered the structural and functional analysis individually to assess the technological innovation system, the integrated process by considering structural analysis as a prerequisite of functional analysis have been applied. Literature review and industry related analysis is applied to gather eight functional factors, and also a questionnaire is designed. After data gathering, the phase of technological development analysis as a tools for prioritizing and analyzing the dependencies between the blocking functions are deployed that was rarely used in the literature. Therefore, the blocking and deriving factors are analysed and appropriate policies are made. Results show that the studied process is an appropriate framework for functional analysis and by the number of policies represented at the end, further researches are suggested.

Today, in most project-based organizations, project managers are facing with many challenges. Projects are organizational strategic processes, performed to achieve business goals. Researches indicate a large number of organizations do not achieve the business goals in the execution of their projects. Therefore, in order to reduce and control the problems of the projects, the classic project management approach must be changed to strategic project management for optimizing the performance and success of a project. Strategic project management can propel companies to better achieve corporate goals. So, organizations should have a formal planning and execution framework in accordance with the strategic approach, to achieve competitive advantage and better performance. Project managers and teams must learn how to focus the business aspects of their projects and better support their company’s strategy, rather than just focus on meeting traditional time, budget, and performance goals. This paper employs a literature review approach, and presents the description of the strategic project management concept and its difference with classical project management. Then, the strategic project management models that help organizations to achieve success and create a competitive advantage have been reviewed. Finally, the authors have concluded, in order to achieve competitive advantage, project success and better performance of organization, the executive and project managers should consider the strategic aspect of project management and implement strategic project management processes in organization.