Predicting the progress trends of science and technology in Iran through a system dynamics approach

Purpose – The purpose of this study is an attempt to identify the most crucial factors and their influence on one another, which can result in predicting the country’s next phase of progress based on these factors’ variation patterns. Design/methodology/approach – The authors proposed a model based on the existing literature and then ran a system dynamics analysis on the data obtained from the World Bank official Web site. The factors including “Research and development expenditure (% of GDP)”, “Scientific and technical journal articles”, “Patent applications”, “Trademark applications”, “Industry value added”, “Researchers in R & D (per million people)” and “High technology export” were considered as the related factors with science and technology. Findings – The findings can also reveal what aspects require more attention and investment if the government demands to facilitate and accelerate the development process. The results show that the most intense increase refers to the number of patent applications and trademark applications, and the lowest increase is related to research and development expenditure and researchers in R & D. Practical implications – The authors hope that tracking the changes of those factors leads practitioners and scholars to have a better understanding of the trends of science and technology development in a country, which in turn leads them to foresee the country’s upcoming opportunities as well as challenges. Originality/value – Proposing a system dynamic model for predicting science and technology trend in a country is relatively novel.