R&D Management in Iran, Opportunities and Threats

Research and Development (R&D) management in Iran has faced many barriers and obstacles, in which R&D units are considered as the basic core of the product development and innovation. Due to structural shortcomings, a great number of organizations and industries have not yet been able to position themselves in the market. There are about 1141 R&D units throughout Iran, due to the geographical decentralization of these units this paper considers and analyzes the R&D case study in one of the provinces located in the north part of Iran, and the findings can be generalized to the other industrialized areas and zones in Iran. In this province, there are about 2504 industrial units of which there are only 44 R&D units certified by the state government. However, there is limited number of these R&D units that are extensively active. This paper also addresses the current status in respect with the R&D activities to find out why little attention has been paid to these activities in the industrial units. Considering the opportunities and challenges of these R&D units reveals that there is a need to activate these units so that they can quickly respond to changes in the market. Finally, a few alternative solutions and improvement plans are proposed, in which the Iranian R&D Society is responsible for supporting and fostering these action plans towards the organization goals. The research methodology was based on a previous field research conducted in Hamedan province, and after the analysis of the research results, a model for the efficiency of R&D units will be presented