فصلنامه رشد فناوری
پیاپی 34 (بهار 1392)

In modern life, uncertainty situations govern all industries. In today`s life, price changes of essential goods, changes in exchange rate as well as stock price, and generally current economic changes all around the world are the cases by which all organizations are involved with. Exploring new and innovative product opportunities involves the generation, development, and selection of the best ideas for new products. The fundamental steps include understanding the needs for new products, discovering existing and potential sources of ideas, describing internal and external requirements, and assessing the opportunities. The steps include reflecting on goals and priorities, examining guidelines, evaluating ideas of new product, and selecting candidates for further development. This paper presents a conceptual framework for selecting the best ideas of innovative products. The model represents a framework that is built upon understanding customer needs, determining the critical market-segment requirements and a profile of the target customers, stakeholder assessment and analyzing their goals and strategies, supply-networks management, competition analysis, infrastructure analysis, and ranking of new product ideas.

In the current era, with joining developing country to the global markets, companies in these countries are facing with competition pressure. Studies show that the best way for producing qualified products is moving toward skillful and smart activities. Since modern international commerce has provided the possibility of purchasing wide range of products, production and consumption are both taking place within far geographical distances. Therefore, in order to permanently exist in dynamic world markets, companies and industries do not have other chances except implementing upgraded techniques along the production process. Value chain analysis has important role in perception of effective implementation of such technique to successfully protect companies in global economy, because in global value chain framework, company can enhance added value and gain competitive advantages by using appropriate techniques through operations and production process improvement. The purpose of this study is the explanation of the role and status of upgrading techniques in global value chain. So at first the definition of upgrading concepts and existence technique is presented, then the role of upgrading technique in global value chain management is investigated through expressing global value chain basics and its models. Studies indicate that, product and process upgrading in hierarchical and quasi-hierarchical global value chain, and functional upgrading technique in market-driven global value chain model, act more efficiently; whereas in the chain of network–based relationship, producers and consumers use their competency and competitiveness complementarily for upgrading and innovation.

The Technology Business Incubators (TBIs) provide an effective means to link technology, capital and know-how in order to accelerate the development of new technology-based companies, leverage entrepreneurial talent, and thus speed the exploitation of technology. The TBIs assist emerging businesses through an array of business support services, developed by incubator management such as assistance in developing business and marketing plans, building management teams, obtaining capital, and ease of access to a range of other more specialized professional services. In addition, incubators provide flexible space, shared equipment, and administrative services. Therefore, the TBI goal is to produce successful firms that will leave the incubator financially viable and freestanding. To address this goal, involvement and support of stakeholders, consisting of sponsors drawn from the local business community, government, the broader community, venture capital providers, technopreneurs, incubator managers and staff are vital. The stakeholders in an incubator will help sustain its financing, offer assistance to its client companies, serve on governing boards, and play generally a key role in the incubator's success. The purpose of this paper is to explain the reason for involving stakeholders in TBI management and necessity of establishing a healthy relationship with them, based on an appropriate set of expectations regarding the nature of the relationship.

Investigating this question that why entrepreneurial indexes in Iran have got no desirable place in relation to other similar countries and also pondering culture as a very important parameter in the formation of entrepreneurs behavior has resulted in this new question that how culture could affect the entrepreneurship in that country. Entrepreneurial Alertness as a critical index in the entrepreneurship means that discovering new opportunities is also discussed as the chosen parameter of entrepreneurship and its relation to culture is analyzed. To study Iranian culture we use credible Hofstede method which enables us to compare cultures of many countries by its four dimensions: power distance, masculinity, individuality and uncertainty avoidance; we also use GEM reports that are related to the entrepreneurship condition in Iran in contrast to other world countries. By investigating the culture based on Hofstede Model of different countries in addition to entrepreneurship alertness and comparison with Iran indexes reported, we may conclude that cultural changes happened on the basis of dimensions of Hofstede as described before against the entrepreneurship indexes such as perceived opportunities in the years of study taken in Iran, i.e. these dimensions have been changed in a way that is not pro to entrepreneurial alertness increase, So that loss of risk taking and also increase of power distance as two dimensions of Hofstede model may decrease the entrepreneurship alertness which results in a total mitigation of entrepreneurship growth.

The aim of this study is to investigate and identify the barriers to knowledge sharing at a high education institute as one of the necessary steps in implementation of the process of knowledge management at universities and HEIs. On the one hand, higher education is the base of development and the main focus of human recourses enrichment in societies, Therefore implementation of knowledge management in this field is one of the basic requirements and a powerful tool for improving knowledge-based societyS as one of the elements of country’s development vision. On the other hand, by changing the slogan “knowledge is power” to “knowledge sharing is power”, knowledge sharing and extending it in organizations, between organizations and different systems has become the main process and orientation inside organizations concerning knowledge management. Therefore creating a comprehensive vision concerning the challenges and barriers of knowledge sharing and a proper understanding of its facilitators in HEIs and universities seems necessary as a pre-requisite in reaching the goals of knowledge management in the field of higher education in the country. In this regard, 29 key factors in knowledge sharing process inside organizations in 5 main categories of human resources, organizational culture, structure, systems and technology and leadership strategies have been determined and as a case study, relationships between main factors and priority of each of the mentioned factors in 5 categories have been presented at Imam Javad University College.

Turn of the third millennium, the role of human resources so highlighted that some referred to as the only source of sustainable competitive advantage. This is especially true as more and more in knowledge based businesses. For a start up company, human capital is the most important. The quality of this investment is more, probability of survival, success, and promotion of the business will more. In today's highly competitive and changing environment, creative and innovative human resource can help to achieve a competitive advantage. Organizations need to become learning and dynamic organizations. So their employees can develop the ability to adapt to changes in competition fields. Commitment, in brief is a person's inner feelings and attitudes towards the organization that influences on performance, judgment and loyalty towards the organization. As a result of continuous study and research on the factors of organizational commitment essential ingredients, managers can reconstruct, rehabilitate and restore of positive behaviors and organizational commitment or modify or eliminate damaging parts of this phenomenon.One of the concepts that can be used for analysis of entrepreneur team durability and the business survival is organizational commitment. In this article we attempt to discussed about the role of organizational commitment in possibility of work team integrity in the early stages of forming a business, based on a comparative study and by combining the concepts of organizational commitment and human resources in startup businesses.The purpose of this paper is to establish a correspondence between the importance of human resources in start-ups and their role in business survival and functions of organizational commitment in fulfilling these requirements.

Business intelligence (BI) is the tool used by enterprises to collect, manage and analyze structural and non-structural data and also information by taking advantage of modern information technology. It utilizes a substantial amount of collected data during the daily operational processes, and transforms the data into information and knowledge to avoid the supposition and ignorance of the enterprises. In the last decade, Business intelligence has evolved as one of the critical applications in organizations to provide useful insight, support decision-making, and drive organizational performance. However, to avoid the ineffective experiences during the deployment, it is important to clarify the impact factors of a BI system and find out a Suitable assessment method to evaluate the performance of BI systems. Evaluating the effectiveness of business intelligence systems is vital to our understanding of the value and efficacy of management actions and investments. This research is a descriptive survey. We construct an Assessment model to assess the performance of business intelligence systems based on the outcomes of previous researches. Furthermore, an expert questionnaire using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to filter out useful performance indicators. The analytic hierarchy process is a structured technique for organizing and analyzing complex decisions. Finally, we analyze a real case by using the constructed assessment model for Business Intelligence systems. We choose an automotive parts manufacturer as a case. The survey sample population consisted of 66 randomly taken employees and managers of the case. The results indicate that the performance of Business Intelligence system in our case was suitable.

Entrepreneurship is one of the most important and necessary strategies in developing and developed countries. But, the truth is that one of the fundamental steps for the development of entrepreneurship is its assessment. Entrepreneurship evaluation should be done based on indexes and global standards so that not only provides a clear picture to the status of entrepreneurship at the national level, But also, provides the possibility of measuring and comparing to the other countries in the field of entrepreneurship development. More than 95percent of the world GDP formed by the Members of GEM. GEM Programs are evaluated based on three indicators: "perceptions and entrepreneurial tendencies," "entrepreneurial activities" and "entrepreneurial passion". Among the 67 countries, Iran is ranked 30th based on Toddler entrepreneurs’ index equals to 11 percent. This index has increasing trend in the past five years, and its value is much greater than the other countries in Middle East. Also the Index of Entrepreneurial Intent in Iran equals to 28/22%, and our country is in 35th place among 67 countries. The Opportunity-oriented entrepreneurship index has grown among other entrepreneurial activity index, (from 5.67% in 1390 to 6.24% in 1391). This means that mandatory Entrepreneurship has decreased. Also the understanding of entrepreneurial opportunities index has increased from 32% in 1390 to 39/2% in 1391. Finally, for fear index of failure, Iran is in 39th place among 67 countries that shows the Iranian low-risk tendency for starting a business.