STRATEGIES FOR STRENGTHENING THE UNIVERSITY - INDUSTRY COLLABORATION IN IRAN

In transition from the industrial to knowledge- based development era, the relationship between university and industry has proved vital and has become an inevitable issue. These two sectors are considered as major elements of national innovation systems and their redefined relationship plays the most important role in commercialization of scientific achievements and economic development. Following their traditional educational and research missions, in national innovation systems, the universities are taking new responsibilities in entrepreneurship and technology development with producing knowledge with economic value and preparing a context for knowledge - based innovation for small and medium enterprises. The main characteristics of knowledge - based development are innovation, entrepreneurship, R&D and SMEs, and the main infrastructures are entrepreneur universities, incubators and science and technology parks and SMEs. For effective relationship between university and industry, new strategies should be adopted in the framework of national innovations systems. In this paper status of universities and industries in Iran are explained and the functions of NIS, taking into account the ranking of Iran industries, are presented. Then in the field of policy making, research and development, human and financial resources, technology transfer and technology dissemination and entrepreneurship, some suggestions are provided for development of university- industry relationship in Iran.