Explanation and classification of technological entrepreneurship financing policies: lessons from Iran

Abstract

Purpose As technological entrepreneurship has distinctive characteristics and needs particular conceptualizations, it is also important to have specific theoretical developments about its technological entrepreneurship. Studying the related domains like entrepreneurship and technology can be helpful in this path; however, their differences should be considered as well. The purpose of this study is to design a model in support of technological entrepreneurship. Since financing is considered as the main restriction on creating and developing technological entrepreneurship, the focus of this study is the research of financial policies of technological entrepreneurship.. Design/methodology/approach This research is from the qualitative point of view and in terms of the purpose of application-development that has been done in the second part. At the first step, Iran’s (IRI) national comprehensive policies have been studied from 1993 to 2020; out of 52 documents, 7 were relevant, of which 38 policies were eventually selected. Then, policy statements were explored, and open coding and categorization has been done through theme analysis approach to attain fundamental themes and organizational themes. In the second step, the themes were extracted in the form of soft research method with the approach of interpretive structural modeling to level the financing policies of technological entrepreneurship in Iran. Findings The results show that the most important factors influencing financing and entrepreneurship in Iran are increasing the productivity of goods and services, supporting entrepreneurship, increasing the efficiency of monetary policies that are in the first level. Research limitations/implications Research limitations include access to upstream documents, strategies, administrative and organizational coordination to study documents. Practical implications These findings are very important to scholars, the policymakers and technological entrepreneurship operators in designing their financing strategies. The results show that the most important factors influencing financing and entrepreneurship in Iran are increasing the productivity of goods and services, supporting entrepreneurship, increasing the efficiency of monetary policies. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to explore the explanation and classification of technology-based entrepreneurship financing policies in Iran. Moreover, the findings of this study would prove useful in detailed studies of financing policies in the Middle Eastern countries as well.