Development requirements of university –based Entrepreneurship Ecosystems in Iran

The analysis of Iran's knowledge economy suggests that the main weakness of the Iranian economy is the lack of processes of innovation and innovative entrepreneurship for the exploitation of new knowledge and technology. These processes fundamentally formed in the knowledge-based entrepreneurship ecosystems that did not developed in Iran economy and has not even known. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to analyze development requirements of university–based entrepreneurship ecosystem in Iran. For this purpose, interpretative structural modeling was used. The use of this method requires identifying the components of the ecosystem based on the literature of the subject and the consideration of the relevant experts and relevant managers and policy makers to explain the relationship between them. Then, the required data needed to analyze the relationship between the requirements were obtained by completing the matrix questionnaire through survey with 20 experts and 10 managers. The research findings indicated that the development of university–based entrepreneurship ecosystem in Iran requires the development of 15 components of this ecosystem and 4 components related to its ecology. Only the development of four components of ecosystem including, the production of technological knowledge and innovative human capital, and the development of entrepreneurship knowledge workers, the creation of knowledge-based entrepreneurship processes are available at the universities. Developing components of the ecology of ecosystems including, open and competitive economy, open society, knowledge culture, and good governance that play a fundamental role in the development of the ecosystem, are only available to the government.