Identifying and Analyzing the Challenges of Agricultural Technological and Knowledge-based Companies, Fairs and Startups, Mazandaran Province

Today, knowledge- based economic has become a strategic and important issue in the economy of different societies and different fields, including agriculture. Since agriculture provides the country's food security, it is important to be knowledge-based. Meanwhile, technological and knowledge-based companies in general and agricultural technological and knowledge-based companies in particular are among the institutions that operate as factories for converting knowledge into goods/services. But these companies in Iran are facing challenges and problems in the path of their growth and development. Therefore, in this research, it was aimed to identify agricultural knowledge- based and technical companies, fairs and startups’ challenges of Mazandaran province.

In order to reach these challenges, the inductive strategy, qualitative data and thematic analysis were used. Data collection was done through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 20 founders or managers of agricultural technology and knowledge-based companies and units located in Mazandaran Science and Technology Park and incubators and the incubators of technological units of Sari university of agricultural sciences and natural resources. Statistical samples were selected using the snowball method and continued until the theoretical saturation point was reached. The ATLAS. ti7.5 software was benefited for data analysis. Also, Peer review method was used to validate the analysis of themes.

The results were 151 basic themes which were determined by ATLAS.ti7.5 quality software. The main themes in this study were “challenges involved in generating ideas and formulating a comprehensive business plan (S1) ","challenges involved in establishing a company in an incubator or Science and Technology Park (S2)", "R&D and sample product production challenges (S3)", "marketing and product and company introduction challenges (S4)", "sales and market stabilization challenges (S5)", "developing new market challenges (S6) " and "market survival and competition challenges (S7)".

Totally, it is suggested that the policies and plans of the law supporting knowledge-based companies should be carefully examined and analyzed; so that they are more compatible with these technological and innovative ecosystems.