The Growth Challenges of Pioneer Knowledge-based Firms of ICT

The information and communication technology (ICT) sector is an economic development pillar as well as a key infrastructure at the national level. ICT firms face various challenges in their growth path due to the knowledge-based nature of ICT sector and the dynamics of competition and customer needs. These challenges in Iran are of greater importance in the growth of ICT companies and especially knowledge-based firms (KBFs), given the business environment, regulations, and limitations in international interactions of ICT sector. This paper identifies and analyzes the growth challenges of ICT KBFs in Iran. This research is applied and qualitative in terms of purpose and type, and the spatial and temporal boundary is ICT firms is in the list of pioneering KBFs (50 firms with the highest sales) in 2021. The required data were collected from documents, reports, semi-structured interviews with experts and managers of 15 studied firms that were selected by judgmental sampling and analyzed by content analysis through axial coding. Based on our findings, firms face 5 key category of growth challenges, i.e., financial; domestic market and export; political, regulatory and legal; business; and challenges pertinent to implementation of the law for supporting KBFs. The most frequent challenge includes financial limitations, difficulty of transferring foreign currency and supplying equipment, legal and IP restrictions and the mismatch of KBFs law with ICT firm’s contingencies. Our findings also provide recommendations for policy makers and managers of ICT KBFs as well as fruitful avenues for future researches. Challenges of KBFs growth in developing countries is an overlooked issue in the literature and this paper is an effort to narrow this empirical gap in the literature.