As technology transfer becomes increasingly important in helping companies to maintain their level of competitiveness, the universities are called on to play a major role in this process.

Collecting the experiences of different countries, this book intends to contribute to the identification of the "best practices" for promoting university-industry links and the exploitation of the research results.

Some of the papers presented come from managers of Industrial Liaison Offices located within the universities, others come from representatives of organisations independent of university but still involved in promoting technology transfer between university and companies.

The papers examine topics such as different ways to create links between the university and the outside world; activities carried out by, and organizational aspects of, industrial liaison offices; university patent and licence policy; involvement of the university in founding spin-off companies; links between the university and science parks, research parks, business innovation centres; government and local authority policies to foster university-industry links.

Miretta Giacometti is senior researcher at the Department of Economic Sciences at the University of Bologna.She is also lecturer in "Foundations of Economics" within the Diploma Course in Social Services at the University of Genova. Her main research area during the last ten years has been the policies for technology transfer, with special reference to science parks.