An Analysis of Regional Creativity and Competitiveness in Iran

One of the pillars of spatial planning is determining the role and function of regions based on their competitive advantages. By developing innovative infrastructure that supports production, regional competitiveness improves regional efficiency and forms a network of complementary and reciprocal relations between regions, which ultimately leads to the capital attraction, value creation, and integrated regional development. In this regard, the present study aims at identifying the creative regions of Iran and determining the competitive advantages of those regions. This study is explanatory applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of methodology. Derived from the document analysis of secondary sources, quantitative data was used to analyze both creativity and competitiveness. The data used to identify creative regions included the number of scientific and research centers and companies, consulting engineers, the industries with high and medium technology, employees in the manufacturing sectors, and the university students of the provinces of Iran. Moreover, the number of employees in major activity groups was used to determine competitiveness. Factor analysis and cluster analysis were performed to identify creative regions, while correspondence analysis was performed to determine competitive advantages in SPSS software. The results show that the provinces of Tehran, East Azerbaijan, Isfahan, Khuzestan, Fars, Kerman, and Mazandaran have the knowledge infrastructure capacity required for creative regions. Isfahan’s share of construction is 11.1 percent, while Tehran’s share of information is 41.2 percent. The interpretation of angles smaller than 0.2 between correspondence analysis vectors reveals that Tehran and Isfahan provinces have competitive advantage in information and communication and manufacturing, respectively. It was also found that most regions of the Iran do not have a specialized role and the competitive advantages of the provinces are not supported by the knowledge infrastructure of the regions.