English 
Svenska The Entrepreneur’s University
Luleå University of Technology (LTU) has always enjoyed good, close relations with business. The university was founded in 1971 as a direct response to the Norrbotten process industry’s need for a highly trained workforce. Today LTU is the Swedish university with the largest proportion of corporate-financed research. Needs-based research is a guiding principal in LTU initiatives.
LTU is proud of its corporate research and its regional grass roots support at the same time as it emphasizes its international approach and collaborative programmes with companies and universities from around the world.
This close corporate cooperation can be seen among the honorary doctors such as financier Carl Bennet, a board member at a href=”http://www.ssab.se”>SSAB and Boliden, and Leif Östling, one of Luleå’s own and CEO at Scania, can be found. The industrialist Rune Andersson is not just an honorary doctor but was also LTU’s (then Luleå College) first employee. He was college administrator for its first few years.
LTU has also seen some successful spin-offs and company start-ups. IT companies are among the better known. The technology for the Marratech video conferencing system began life at LTU and is today owned by Google. The British company CSR recently acquired the acclaimed LTU company NordNav that developed software-based GPS satellite receivers. Sweden’s fastest growing company in 2010, Student Consulting, was started in a student dorm by LTU-students.
