26th International Association for Management of Technology Conference - IAMOT 2017

Introduction During last decades a large amount of efforts have been done by developing countries in order to technological catch-up and acquiring essential capabilities for manufacturing complex products and systems. As a considerable case, Iran has been doing a lot of efforts in order to acquire key knowledge and capabilities for manufacturing and gas turbines and it achieved favorable and remarkable results. This paper aims at investigating the case of technological catching up and acquiring technological capabilities of manufacturing gas turbines in Oil Turbo Compressor Company (OTC) as an Iranian latecomer firms and identifying key drivers and factors affecting on this process. Methodology In this paper, the qualitative approach and case study method was applied. Regarding to data collection, a total of 11 in depth and semi-structured interviews were performed in several companies and organizations. In addition, several documents such as long-term planning documents, organizational charts, projects reports and websites were studied and analyzed. In order to analyzing data, we have extracted a preliminary theoretical framework based on research background including six major drivers. Then, we have used this theoretical framework in order to analyzing our collected data. Findings Our findings showed that below-mentioned drivers have significant role in technological catching-up by OTC in gas turbine industry as complex product systems: • Government policies, supports and initiatives such as accumulation all domestic demands to gas turbine; signing the most costly research contract between NIGC as a government agency and OTC; and leading, coordinating and monitoring progress of project via stablishing steering committee • Networking, interactions and collaboration among key actors and stakeholders like NIGC as customer, investor, coordinator and regulator; OTC and its subsidiaries (Turbo Tech, OTech and MIGT) as producer and executor of project and some domestic universities • Technological acquisition strategies adopted by OTC like co-manufacturing under license of Siemens, acquiring a knowledge-based company in order to establish a research and design center, adopting bottom-up approach • Existence of large and remarkable domestic market and demand for industrial gas turbines in Iran, accumulating of this volume of demand and ordering it to domestic producers and suppliers • Managerial and organizational capabilities of OTC such as system integration, mega-project management, intra and inter-organizational knowledge management • The context surrounding OTC including national science and technology policies, energy policies and environmental factors like international sanctions Closing This paper intends to contribute to the literature of technology management in developing countries by examining an Iranian specific case of technological catch-up in gas turbine industry as a CoPS example by a latecomer firm.