Either institutionally or by providing staff, companies should actively collaborate in the latter stages of university training in the field of Innovation management. By developing programmes which emphasise the role of entrepreneurs in bridging the gap between scientific-technical advances and commercial reality, they can help to identify potential problems and the means of solving them.

Innovation Teams ( i-Teams) en el Massachussets Institute of Technology – MIT (EE.UU.)

i-Teams is a graduate programme involving several centres at the MIT: the School of Engineering, the Sloan School of Management, the Deshpande Center and the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. Companies are also actively involved through the participation of employees. The main aim of i-Teams is to launch and then market the technology which is developed by the Deshpande Center. In these types of courses, training is provided not only unidirectionally from teachers to students, but also the other way round, since the students themselves participate in the process of defining strategies to market the technology in question, by helping tutors (researchers, technology developers and entrepreneurs) to gain new insights into their products by means of a thorough analysis of the potential market. A key aspect of the course is a deliverable prototype which makes the investigation seem more realistic. The role of the tutors which are provided by Companies is fundamental, since they can offer realistic and experience-based insight into market barriers and opportunities for the introduction of new technology.

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1. Interview with Doctor Pérez Breva (Deshpande Center - MIT).
2. Interview with Prof. Roberts (MIT Entrepreneurship).
3. http://web.mit.edu/deshpandecenter/about.html Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EEUU.
4. http://web.mit.edu/smart/grants/ - Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology (SMART) - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EEUU.