In the frame of the European Research Area, the reinforcement of the links between the Higher Education and the environment places as one of the key points for the development across the transfer of knowledge and technology generated in the public research centres and the universities. It is considered besides the fact that the development of activities of research and innovation to regional level has a positive influence in the region and in the set of the European capacity of research: connect with the industrial parks of development, creation and support of centres of excellence, creation of scientific and technological parks, mobility of the researchers, etc. “Transfers of knowledge between a business enterprise and a university, in whatever form, is facilitated when firm owners or managers have long-standing relationships with the university, as alumnis, collaborators or co-owners” (Julio M. Rosa & Pierre Mohnen, 2008).

One of the priorities in the European political trends of innovation centres is therefore the cooperation that must be established between the institutions of higher education and the centres of research and the business, simultaneously that tries to give and innovative impulse to the European SMEs.

The proposal that appears in this abstract is on the Galicia context – region that is in the northwest of Spain - and is based on the importance of promoting the research in the institutions of Higher Education and the relations of these with environment across the transfer of knowledge between both sectors.

In the first approximation to the situation of the research in Galicia, it is necessary to indicate that the expense in R&D in relation to the GDP (0,90) is still less with regard to the Spanish average and other regions of Spain as Madrid (1,98), Navarra (1,92), País Vasco (1,60) or Cataluña (1,43); although a progressive increase is observed in the last years of investment in research and development, (EUROSTAT and the National Institute of Statistics, 2008).

Objectives
Our research has as main objective to identify the indicators of innovation of the university research, as well as the mechanisms of collaboration between both sectors (university and business), in order to promote the contribution of the Higher Education to the economy and to the society, principally to regional level, in the own region.

Methodology
With this purpose, one survey has been elaborated in order to gather information about the perceptions and valuations, in one hand researchers sample of the universities and in the other hand the industry in topics so relevant as: (1) The perceptions of the relation between university and company; (2) Research and Development and finally; (3) Relations between university and business.

Outcomes and Results
The results that we show in this proposal are about two main aspects:
-The analysis of the research in Galicia: expenses in activities of R&D, human resources and business innovation.
-The valuation of the research groups in the three universities that compose the University Galician System (Santiago de Compostela, Vigo and Coruña) about the contribution of Higher Education to the regional development in Galicia. This part presents some descriptive statistics about the survey used to analyse the transfer of knowledge flows from universities to business enterprises.

This paper was written under funding from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (Reference Nº: SEJ2007-67795)