Tech Transfer Offices Can Facilitate Business Startups

"There exists in some quarters a long-standing belief that, in terms of starting biotech companies, university technology transfer offices are staffed with highly educated order takers who do not understand business. If the lawyers and scientists in these offices are not actual impediments to getting business done, then at best they are bureaucrats frozen in idleness until an entrepreneur spies a technology worth millions and thaws them out long enough to strike a deal.

The truth is somewhat different. Tech transfer offices can indeed wait passively for entrepreneurs to walk in the door and license something. But sometimes startup formation begins at the universities, which in their excitement about their technologies do not wait for entrepreneurs. Instead, they spin off companies and seek CEOs to manage them. This happens not just at Stanford and MIT, which benefit mightily from flourishing venture capital activity nearby. Other universities also do startups very well -- or are getting better -- even where VC activity is less intense, or is mainly devoted to other industries, or where spinoffs lack a tradition of encouragement."

Read more in this article from Signals Magazine.