Investigating the Relationship between Governance and Key Processes of the Iran Internet of Things Innovation System.
PAZH | Despite the emergence of unique opportunities for social-industrial growth and development resulting from the use of the Internet of Things (IoT), the lack of a well-posed IoT governance will cause serious threats to personal privacy, public safety, industrial security, and dubious data gathering by unauthorized entities.
Furthermore, adopting a systemic governance approach, particularly for the IoT innovation system, requires a precise clarification of the concept and scope of IoT governance. In this study, by employing the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach, the role of governance in the Iran IoT innovation system is investigated.
Contacting respondents across seven industries, including Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Healthcare, Transportation, Oil and Gas, Energy, Agriculture, and Banking over the course of three months, the authors performed statistical analysis on 319 fulfilled questionnaires using SPPS and Smart PLS software. Findings show that all IoT-related TIS processes have been affected by IoT governance functions.
Developing countries need IoT governance in order to develop safe and secure technological innovations following Industry 4.0. A framework that can intelligently affect the key processes of developing a technological innovation in cooperation with the system’s structural components.
This study has investigated the relationship between the functions of IoT governance and the key processes of IoT in Iran. According to the research findings, IoT governance influences seven key TIS processes through four common functions. Emphasizing the normative and ideological aspects of the working, industrial, and human society, the function of policy-making can mainly affect the two processes of “development and diffusion of knowledge” and “influence on the direction of research”.
The function of regulation, relying on economic, technological, and social interventions, as well as using standard tools, plays a key role in the process of “market formation” to ensure the implementation of adopted policies. Finally, IoT governance can affect almost all key processes in the IoT innovation system through facilitation and service provision.
Exploring and modeling these determining direct relationships between the IoT governance functions and the key processes of the IoT innovation system in Iran, as a developing country, is the most important achievement and research contribution of this study. In fact,
the provided model has well positioned the governance outside a TIS, and the supported hypotheses can be considered in the literature of TISs in the era of Industry 4.0 by following researchers.
Future studies can test the results of this study at other levels of innovation systems such as regional, national, or sectoral. In addition, applying or evaluating the governance concept for similar fields, including artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, and other digital technologies could be suggested as a research topic for those who are interested in this field. It is necessary to mention at this point that this study has focused solely on the direct relationships between Internet of Things governance, the IoT governance functions, and the key processes of the IoT innovation system.
Hence, some governance functions may have indirect relationships with the key processes of the IoT-based TIS and should not be neglected by IoT governance. Thus, considering indirect relationships between the IoT governance functions and key processes of the IoT-related TIS could be suggested as a research topic for the following researchers.
In terms of practical implications, this study proposes that adopting and implementing IoT technology in a developing country needs full coordination and cooperation at the first steps of development at the national level. The IoT actors, networks, players often coming from the government sector in developing countries, and institutions should actively participate in shared activities.
Although these activities, in this study, have been grouped into seven key processes under the IoT–related TIS, it is very important to pay attention to prioritize critical processes. In fact, decision-makers in developing countries, after analyzing functional dynamics in their own context, should decide the governance arrangements regarding the seven key processes of the IoT-related TIS at the national level.
However, it seems that the key process of “legitimation”, because of the unbalanced economy, is playing a vital role in the IoT Iran innovation system. In fact, the pervasive acceptance of the Internet of Things in Iran could enable other processes in short term, including “Knowledge Development & Diffusion”, “Entrepreneurial Experimentations”, and “Direction of Research”.
Relying on these four processes in practice, the other three processes could emerge in the long term.
FARSI
