Abstract:

The present paper describes the authors’ experience, the one as consultant for organizational restructuring and business development, and the other as professor and head of the department of welding engineering and joining technology, in their observations of an outdated and inadequate approach to university-industry-collaboration, their restructuring work in creating, testing, setting up and applying a new approach for the department in university-industry-collaboration, and the hereof resulting success in the changed collaborative work with industry. According to the authors’ experience, university must redefine its self-conception, understand its societal responsibility, and make actively use of its crucial role as supplier and partner for industry in research and development for innovative technologies and services as well as in the academic education of tomorrows highly qualified workers.