A Model for Promoting Technological Learning for Innovation Ambidexterity Development: A Case Study of Iran Steel Industry

The complex and changing nature of the environment has led innovation to be the most important factor in maintaining and enhancing corporate performance. In order to have a comprehensive look at it, the concept of innovation ambidexterity has been developed and arranged focusing on exploitative innovation to maintain the competitiveness of existing products and with explorative innovation seeking new markets and products. According to literature, one of the most important processes to achieve this type of innovation and to overcome its challenges, especially in latecomer companies, is to enhance technological capability through learning mechanisms. This research has tried to propose appropriate policy programs to evaluate the effectiveness of these mechanisms in Iran steel industry. For this purpose, the integration of focus group and artificial neural network methods was used. The results, which were obtained using the Innovation Survey, showed that learning by doing is the most important learning mechanism that steel companies should pay attention to, as well as for exploitative innovation, learning by copying and design, and for exploratory learning, learning by research and interactions placed in the next rank. In the final stage, with the study of the global policies in other countries, 20 policy tools have been proposed and, with the focus group approach, seven programs have been identified as the most important tools that influences on technological learning.