Work package 2 – Survey results

General problems: 1 Companies have little interest in cooperation with universities (10 partners) 2 Region cannot take advantage of the universities (8 partners) 3 Region suffers from brain drain (7 partners)

 Companies are interested … but it is difficult to stimulate these links (partner 1)  A few companies are much involved in cooperation (partner 3)  SME´s are lacking resources and capability to utilize university research and execute cooperation. Sometimes also different timespans in R&D activities (partner 8)  … most of the challanges from entrepreneurs … are better perceived as an opportunity by smaller private schools that are … more flexible (than the universities; TB) (partner 9)

 Although there are five universities and 34 vocational centers …, the region is still lagging behind concerning the economic development, knowledge-based economy, technologic renovation and innovation introducing. There are intraregional disparities among the districts according to the kind and level of the education of the employees in the different sectors. (11)

 The main problem is how to keep highly educated people in the region (partner 11)  Region has suffered from brain drain in the past but that is beeing turned around (partner 1)

Problems - varying focus 1 Regional depopulation due to universities elsewhere and primitive workmarket to go back to (6 partners) 2 Sparsely populated region makes traditional university structure difficult (4 partners) 3 ”Ivory tower university”, isolated, very little relevance for regional growth (2 partners) 4 Lack of educated people (4 partners)

1 More competitive region (14 partners – 57 points) 2 Transforming traditional economy into more competitive economy (10 partners – 38 points) 3 Knowledge development economy in university areas (11 partners – 36 points) 4 General regional business growth (8 partners – 25 pionts) 5 Serving trad. community needs (7 partners – 24 points) B. What do you really want the universities to be a tool for in regional development? Rank 1-5! (Rank 1 = 5 pts etc.)

1 Creating innovation structures with university – companies - government (12 partners – 44 points) 2 More effects of educated people in regional economy (10 partners – 39 points) 3 More effects of university research in regional economy (13 partners – 35 points) 4 More adaption of education and research to regional needs (11 partners – 27 points)

1 Projects and structures between companies and university (14 partners – 32 points) 2 Region/community – university – companies innovation structures(12 partners – 26 points) 3 Other kind of partnership community – university - companies (10 partners – 26 points)