Mapping an open innovation model for the Iranian gold industry with a meta-synthesis perspective

Open innovation has been discussed in the management of innovation literature over past decade, which has led to the increasing recognition of its benefits, including the use knowledge inputs accelerate domestic innovation and expanding the market for using innovation in small and medium company. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors affecting or being affected in a comprehensive model of open innovation for gold industry of Iran and to explain the relationship between these factors. The present research is of qualitative type with exploratory-explanatory nature in which the systematic review of research literature, meta-synthesis approach and content analysis have been used. Based on the seven steps of meta-synthesis after passing through several layers of evaluation: 54 articles, out of 3151 initial ones, were chosen careful content review and identifying desired variables and semantic units. In regard, 25 concept codes were extracted and after examining their validation by help subject matter experts, the relationships between them were also induced from scientific texts and drawn in a conceptual framework. Then, in order to implement the identified framework in the gold industry of Iran, semi-structured interviews with the experts the gold industry of Iran were designed and conducted, which led to the identification of 11 new and specific factors for the gold industry. By merging and categorizing the factors, 34 final categories were identified and by examining relationships between them, open innovation model in gold industry of Iran was developed and important influential and influential factors were identified in model.