Ebrahim Souzanchi Kashani - Assistant Proffessor, Graduate School of Management and Economics, Sharif University ofTechnology, Tehran, Iran- Visiting fellow, SPRU, university of sussex
Mahboubeh Nourizade - PhD candidate, School of Management and Economics, Tarbiat Modaress University, Tehran, Iran

The interesting question of innovation in LMT and HMT sectors is taken into account in order to find out thedifferences between the contexts of developed and developing countries. This analysis has been made possible byvery new data sources from the first round of Innovation survey in Iran containing information of about 2500 firmsin different sectors. We developed 4 hypotheses from the literature that could have also been tested by the availabledata. We found that while LMT sectors in Iran are heavily depended on their suppliers to introduce new innovationsin the form of new machineries; suppliers have not been considered for them as their main source of knowledge andinformation. Market consultants found to be very important in linking LMT firms with their suppliers. Moreover,they are not more innovative in terms of process innovation in comparison to the HMT firms while the latter is moreproduct innovative than the former. HMTs are more depended on their customers‘ information, especially linkageswith their clients from public sector is pivotal for their success in innovation. We discussed some context specificfactors that could help explaining this specific pattern of behavior and then developed a model of innovation for theboth sectors.

Innovation, Low-Medium-Tech sectors, High-Medium-Tech sectors, Developing Country, Innovation Survey