HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS AS A KEY PIECE OF UNIVERSITY – INDUSTRY COLLABORATION: THE CASE FROM MONDRAGON UNIVERSITY

The evolution of the university towards an Entrepreneurial University started with the second academic revolution, when the university adopted a third mission and became into a teaching, research and economic and social development enterprise (Etzkowitz, 2003). For achieving this new status, an Entrepreneurial University requires to undertake “soft” and/or “hard” entrepreneurial activities, depending on the maturity of each university in entrepreneurial issues (Philpott et al., 2011). Moreover, some of these initiatives (specifically, consultancy and contract research) increase the efficiency of collaboration between universities and existing high technology firms (Klofsten and Jones-Evans, 2000). Following in the same vein, this paper, on the one hand, describes how Mondragon University (MU onwards) is increasing the university – industry relationship through its research (collaborative research) and transference model. This model covers all the way from the knowledge acquisition task (through students) to knowledge spreading to companies (through contract research, continuous training and consultancy), passing by industrial research and product development activities. And on the other hand, the present article describes the importance of the students (PhD students included) for increasing the university-industry collaboration and how MU faces up it.