identifying and prioritizing the factors affecting the systematic innovation process for new product development in entrepreneur firms active in food biotechnology

as global population grows consumption by people around the world and correspondingly demand for food increase. through using a systematic method for innovation, new product development (npd) in food industry has made initial ideas to change into the salable products and services possible in the market (e.g. genetic engineered products). the research method was exploratory mixed type (qualitative-quantitative); at the qualitative section, semi-structured interviews with ten experts were carried and at the quantitative section 80 questionnaires were distributed which 64 questionnaires were returned. managers, informed university professors and informed experts and specialists in the field of new product development constitute the statistical population of this research in qualitative and quantitative section. sampling in qualitative is snowball method and in quantitative is random stratified method. results demonstrated that npd stages include concept development, design, prototyping, mass production, marketing and sale. friedman test for prioritizing the sub-factors in each of the five stages showed that npd team formation, formulation design, producing the pre-test sample, financial and economical investigations, and price were respectively effective on systematic innovation process in npd. suggestions have been presented based on the results for entrepreneurial firms which work in the field of food biotechnology.