Innovation Biome and Its Comparison to Other Existing Metaphors: A Survey Approach

Extended Abstract
Abstract
 The necessity to comprehend the phenomenon of innovation and its complexities, has made researchers to make use of different metaphors such as system, ecosystem, factory, maze, cluster, chain, network, etc. to understand this phenomenon. Recently, biome as a new metaphor has been borrowed from the field of ecology for innovation. The present article tries to compare this new metaphor with the previous metaphors and we have used expert's opinions. To this end, the eight principles for optimal metaphoras well as six acceptability rules for metaphors for metaphors used for innovation are considered in terms of two main hypotheses and 14 sub-hypotheses. This means that the biome metaphor is more suitable for explaining innovation. Because it will facilitate the analysis and policy-making of biome components in different fields including ecosystems and the relationships among them. Therefore, it is recommended that innovation policy makers make use of this new framework.
Introduction
Researchers have also used ecological and biological metaphors in innovation and business studies. They have used metaphors such as ecosystems to account for some phenomena. A variety of terms such as Environmental ecosystems, industrial ecosystem, economic ecosystem, digital business ecosystem and entrepreneurial ecosystem have already been put forward in different fields. in our previous study , we tried to account for the shortcomings of the previous metaphor and Introduce a new metaphor (innovation biome) that has the ability to account for innovation processes and serve as a perfect metaphor for the innovation environment at the national level and finally lead to identification and extraction of useful policy implications needed to Improve the innovation environment in different countries; Implications that have been overlooked in innovation system metaphors.
Case study
The population of the study includes faculty members, PhD graduates and a number of experts in this field. The expert inclusion criteria were specialized experience in the field of innovation studies and the tendency to describe their understanding of the National Innovation Biome as a complement to the innovation ecosystem. thus, individuals with at least 2 years of managerial and policy-making experience in the field of innovation systems or innovation ecosystem; at least 3 published articles in the field of innovation studies and innovation ecosystem; and at least 2 years of activity in the afore-mentioned area were used as population of the study.
Materials and Methods
Snowball sampling method was used to determine the sample size in a systematic manner. Semi-structured Interviews (45 to 60 min) were used for data collection. SPSS software was used to analyze the collected data.
Discussion and Results
The innovation biome of each country includes different ecosystems (such as the innovation ecosystem of industrial sectors, different technologies, etc.), but a general atmosphere resulting from the general political situation as well as the economic and social life in that country is dominant over all those ecosystems. In other words, just as all ecosystems in the desert biome, for example, must adapt themselves to the general conditions governing the desert biome (i.e., water stress), all the ecosystems in the Iranian innovation biome need to adapt themselves to the political, cultural and economic conditions of the country.
Therefore, in the present study, the metaphorology strategy is systematically used to assess and validate the proposed metaphor of national innovation biome. The results confirm all eight principles of competency assessment and six principles of credibility assessment.
Conclusion
When a set of ecosystems with distinct functions in economic development are introduced into the economic environment of countries, it is necessary to define the governing environment at the national level. According to the hypothesis of the present study, innovation biome is actually the institutional environment that governs different ecosystems in countries. The ecosystems in each country lie within a context that, according to our hypothesis, can most probably be defined as an innovation biome; because ecosystems do not typically lie within a context sharing the nature of a "system." this is a gap that has not been addressed in the literature, and some studies have even extended the metaphor of ecosystem to national borders to introduce the national ecosystem of innovation. Aside from addressing this issue, in the present study attempts were made to bridge in this gap by introducing the Innovation biome.