ارائه چارچوب ارزیابی اکوسیستم کارآفرینی پارک‌های علم و فناوری کشور

Aim and Introduction: The study of science and technology parks literature shows that approaches based on regional economy, technological and industrial clusters, and innovation systems are the basis for creating science and technology parks. The main idea of the formation of science and technology parks is to develop technology and entrepreneurship and promote innovation culture through managing the flow of knowledge and technology between universities, research institutes and private companies and the market. In the past years, many policymakers, academics and company managers have increasingly recognized the benefits of regional entrepreneurial ecosystems. Accordingly, the concept of entrepreneurial ecosystem means thinking and action have been used to design entrepreneurial policies. Examining the research reports indicates that a small number of technological businesses enjoy parking services in the life cycle of the company, which is caused by two categories of factors, the first includes the macro issues, such as reduction of government budgets, lack of management efficient systems, sanctions and bottlenecks in international communication, lack of participation of the private sector, and the second includes lack of experience of the park headquarters in managing technology and innovation, crisis management and solving upcoming challenges, and issues such as managing interactions, resilience and sustainability of businesses. Hence, the purpose of this research is to provide a framework for evaluating the entrepreneurial ecosystem of science and technology parks, because according to the experiences gained, providing the framework prevents the partiality and insularity of science and technology parks in drafting programs to support entrepreneurial processes and minimizes parallel work and waste of resources.
Methodology: The research is qualitative and based on systematic grounded theory. The data of the research was collected through semi-structured interviews including 15 experts in the field of entrepreneurship and science and technology parks of the country until reaching theoretical saturation and purposeful sampling was done by theoretical and snowball method. The statistical population of this research consists of experts related to the field of research. Sampling is also purposeful and in the form of snowballs. Sampling continued until theoretical saturation was reached. Furthermore, results evaluation criteria are as follows: 1. Matching, 2. Ability to understand, 3. Ability to generalize, 4. Control, 5- Practical relevance,
6- Efficiency, and 7- Modifyability. For determining the overall validity of the model in this research, the ratio test wass used to measure the validity of the ground theory.
Findings: Data analysis was also done with the Strauss and Corbin approach in three stages of open, axial and selective coding. The result showed that causal-conditions (characteristics of ecosystem place structures, entrepreneurship policies and ecosystem place entrepreneurship indicators), contextual-conditions (financial, human, physical and intangible infrastructure, capacity building, promotion, enablers), Intervening-conditions (adaptability, elimination of tension, resilience), strategies (inside- and outside- entrepreneurial ecosystem interactions), outcomes (wealth creation, workforce, businesses), pivotal include, evaluation the entrepreneurial ecosystem of science and technology parks (with indicators of support, mediation, technical opportunism, and help for explotation of opportunity).
Discussion and Conclusion: Unfortunately, science and technology parks rarely evaluate the entrepreneurial ecosystem created by themselves and only rely on performance evaluation results. A short-term solution in this field is to sensitize the officials of the parks and the Ministry of Science to the issue of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, so that they consider the evaluation of the entrepreneurial ecosystem along with the evaluation of the park’s performance, because the most important task of the park is streamlining and creating stable connections to carry out its missions. Considering the financial constraints and the threatening environmental conditions of the country, the best strategy is to use the capabilities of the ecosystems in a win-win relationship to advance the park’s goals.The proposed framework can be used as a basis for evaluation the establishment or development of entrepreneurial ecosystem of science and technology parks. To this end, the following suggestions are presented: 1. It is suggested that in future research, the framework presented in this research should be used to evaluate the entrepreneurial ecosystem of other Science and Technology Parks of the Ministry of Science across the country with a wider population and statistical sample and compare the results with these results. 2. It is suggested to conduct comparative studies to take advantage of the situation of other countries in evaluating the entrepreneurial ecosystem of science and technology parks in the world. 3. It is suggested that the evaluation framework of the entrepreneurship ecosystem of science and technology parks related to executive bodies and specialized parks be designed and its results be compared with this research.