The challenge of university startups in the USA: Lessons from successful cases

University startups (or spinoffs) offer a lucrative alternative to licensing university technologies. But, in practice, startups are far fewer than outright licenses to ongoing businesses. One of the hurdles to university startups is the need for some entrepreneurial behavior on the part of the university and its faculty members to enable university startups. This paper's thesis is that, today, the income to universities from IP primarily comes from licensing and less through equity holdings in university startups; consequently, potential income-producing inventions are idling on the shelf. There needs to be a more aggressive effort to form new startups with university inventions with equity participation by the inventor and/or the university; but how?