TTOs engage in a variety of commercial activities that are meant to facilitate the process of bringing research developments to market, often acting as a channel between academia and industry.
[3][4] In that letter, Bush advocated that the US should continue to fund basic research at high levels, arguing that while the US no longer had a geographic frontier, extending the boundaries of science would allow the creation of new technologies, which in turn would spur new industries, create jobs, generate wealth, and maintain US power.
Many universities in the early 20th century did not engage in patenting and licensing, since the government owned most inventions, and out of fear of interfering with their missions of supporting the growth of knowledge and objective inquiry.
[8][9] While the broad goal of TTOs is to commercialize university research, they engage in numerous activities that not only bring these developments to market but also encourage and support faculty and students in the entire technology transfer process.
[10] Some universities such as MIT and Northwestern have separate offices for industry and corporate relations which typically work in conjunction with the TTO of the institution.
In this case, TTOs often exploit the relationships developed by the corporate relations office, focusing more specifically on the technology transfer process itself.
[13] Hence, many TTOs establish business incubators and programs for faculty and students in an attempt to enhance the entrepreneurial atmosphere among researchers at the university.
[1][16] Since TTOs deal with both academic research and industry, they consist of a diverse set of individuals, including scientists, lawyers, analysts, licensing experts, and business managers.
[19] Some research has suggested that equity in spin-off companies may provide higher returns than licensing,[20] but this strategy seems to be more common with TTOs that are financially independent from the parent university (i.e. external TTO structure).
[20] As many major research universities across the US began to adopt TTOs, institutions outside the US became attracted to the idea of taking control of their commercialization activities as well.
Prior to the 2000s, many German-speaking and Scandinavian countries had a policy of "professor's privilege", in which faculty retain the right to control the intellectual property of their inventions.
In addition, in recent years many OECD and EU nations have created legislation that emulates Bayh-Dole, in an attempt to increase the commercialization activities and impact of their respective research universities.