Research on identifying opportunities to improve collaboration between companies and professors from technical higher education

Abstract We live in an extremely dynamic society in which classical approaches applied by companies no longer provide viable solutions to the problems they face on the market every day. Companies that will be able to quickly access information, qualified workforce and innovative solutions will be successful. This goal can only be achieved by those companies that will actively involve universities in their “life” through research partnerships, professional training programs, etc. thus being able to respond effectively to the market demands. The paper presents the results obtained through the achieved research by processing of the information collected from the teaching staff of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca and the companies' representatives from Satu-Mare participating in the events of the project “Specialists for Satu-Mare”. The most important findings are: the need to develop training courses and to involve professors in research activity in order to design, develop and implement new products. Finally, proposals are being made to improve the collaboration between companies and professors.