Investigating the Factors Affecting the Success of SME'S Innovation Ecosystem Using Fuzzy AHP

In severe market conditions, innovation is the creation, development, and implementation of new ideas or improvement in current products, processes, and strategies, consequently leading to successful trading and market leadership, providing values for beneficiaries, bringing economic growth, and improving the living standards. An innovation ecosystem is described as a physical environment that refers to a network or cluster of entrepreneurs, inventors, enterprises, universities, research laboratories, governmental agencies, and other institutions and resources aiming at achieving a new process or product development. Therefore, this research mainly aims to identify and prioritize the factors affecting the success of the innovation ecosystem in enhancing small businesses. In this research, after identifying the effective factors using library study and interviews with managers at science and technology parks, a Delphi survey was applied to recognize main factors for the statistical population, including companies located in Tehran, Pardis, and Qom Science and Technology Parks. Then, the AHP questionnaire was used to prioritize the factors. The results can be helpful to innovation ecosystems to find and apply their critical success factors, foster small businesses and startups, and survive in the competition ground.