For this reason, on his trips abroad he analyzed the collaboration networks between companies, universities and research centers as a basis for economic and social development. In 1965, he began to include his ideas on the importance of research and technological development in the weekly talks at the Professional School. He considered that the competition between nations was between the companies that collaborated with the laboratories, so it was necessary to invest in human capital and technology. With his usual pragmatism, he convinced several professors at the School to dedicate part of their time to applied technological research, and after a few years of testing, 1968 a team was created with partial autonomy from the School and with their own projects. Subsequently, he encouraged the cooperatives of the Alto Deba Valley to contract projects to the research team, and Laboral Kutxa to financially lead the construction of a separate building from the Professional School. The dual objective was to provide its own research capacity in the medium and long term in the style of the German Fraunhofers, under the legal tutelage of the Professional School, and eventually to set up the first cooperative company for applied research. In 1973 Laboral Kutxa approved the project, and in October 1974 work began on the new building. The tutelage of the teaching center lasted until 1982, when Ikerlan had its own legal personality as a cooperative, with the Valley companies and the researchers themselves being partners. Arizmendiarrieta also involved the Public Administration in financing generic projects, being a source of inspiration for public-private collaboration in the field of research in the Basque Country. Cooperative Corporation In February 1966, Arizmendiarrieta spent a week in France visiting laboratories and factories in Paris, Dijon and Grenoble. And in September he made another tour to Germany, visiting in Bonn, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich, Hamburg and Berlin different commercial, credit, consumer, and industrial cooperatives. In both cases, he came back with the idea that Mondragon could also reach the degree of harmonic development that he had seen, for which it was necessary to become competitive in increasingly larger areas. What reinforced his permanent discourse of cooperation. The cooperatives were integrated into Regional Groups such as Ularco, based on their geographical proximity, and it was not until December 1984 that the reorganization pre-congress was created with a more business and less sociological focus, creating the Mondragon Cooperative Group. The process