The relationship between universities of professional education and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

The relationship between universities of professional education on the one hand and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises on the other hand is seen as an important means to improve the innovative position of these enterprises. In this article, a case with a new of point of view is presented: how do entrepreneurs perceive the lecturers of these universities who are supervising the students doing their internships? The approach of our case study seemed to have worked very well. Our research makes clear that (i) innovation is hardly an explicit topic of the students; (ii) innovativeness is the worst functioning characteristic of the supervising lecturers. This leads to the recommendations that the lecturers should be instructed on the topic of innovation. © 2009, Inderscience Publishers.