Exclusive and Digital analysis of the transformation of Institutions in the knowledge and innovation system of the handmade world carpet industry

Abstract

The Persian handmade carpet industry has various economic, social, and national dimensions. The rich diversity of Persian carpets is a symbol of different cultures and traditions in this country. To ensure the sustainability of the knowledge digital and innovation system of the handmade carpet industry, in addition to considering the dominant approaches of the innovation systems, attention should be paid to the transformative approach that pursues holistic transformation in the production and consumption systems. The present study aims to identify formal transformation institutions, classify them into main categories, and analyze them based on the production step, approval date, institution type, and geographical area of approval. Based on the results, there are 316 formal institutions in the handmade carpet industry. By open coding, 372 concepts were extracted from 509 concepts derived from different formal transformation institutions. Based on the axial coding, the formal institutions were divided into six initial categories of “carpet authority”, “carpet sales and maintenance inside Iran”, “handmade carpet exports and imports”, “carpet production infrastructure”, “handmade carpet production”, and “sanitary-therapeutic category”. At the next step, the matrix of the main categories based on different production steps was drawn. Among the main categories, the highest frequency is related to the category of “carpet production infrastructure” and the subcategory of “financial supply of carpet”. Although there are a lot of formal institutions that support production, carpet weavers as the main people involved in production have received minimum support during their working years due to unawareness of supports and loan conditions.