Developing Iran’s government strategies for strengthening the national system of innovation using SWOT analysis

Abstract

This article offers a method for formulating government strategies for improving and strengthening national innovation systems in particular for the developing countries. For this purpose, the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis (as an instrument for examining the innovation system situation) is recommended as well as studying the best practices for formulating the strategies. This method has been implemented in Iran, as a developing country. Before executing the process, ten essential elements comprising six major functions and four major interactions were briefly examined to describe the innovation system of a country. The results were used to describe the implementation stages of the recommended method for Iran.