Over the years, however, the government came to realize the importance of discoveries made in the ivory tower and the vast profits that could be garnered from facilitating tech transfer.

The result was the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which loosened restrictions and spurred universities nationwide to set up programs to facilitate the practice.

In the intervening years, tech transfer has taken off and yielded impressive results. In 2000 alone, the practice netted $1 billion for universities nationwide, according to the Association of University Technology Managers.

And now, after years of watching from the sidelines, Harvard is looking to capitalize on the practice.

The University already has two offices that facilitate its $20 million-a-year tech transfer business: the Office for Technology Licensing (OTL), which coordinates tech transfer at HMS and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and the Office for Technology and Trademark Licensing (OTTL), which handles the procedure at the rest of the University.

Despite the increased emphasis that Summers and Hyman have placed on tech transfer, the administration has not yet made any policy changes. University officials say that the transformation that must take place is not a structural one.

“What we’re engaged in talking about is how we change the culture so that we do a better job of moving discoveries out of our labs into the commercial sector in a way that protects our academic values and avoids harmful conflicts of interest,” Hyman said. “Cultural change isn’t something that happens over night.”

Hyman says the University may even sponsor workshops on tech transfer.

But according to Joyce Brinton, who directs OTTL, the presence of these offices has already helped Harvard to become more competitive, coordinating and channeling industrial interest in university research, which has surged in recent years.

“Over the years, the pace of activity has increased as more companies are realizing that universities generate inventions that the companies can license, develop and ultimately market,” she writes in an e-mail. “In addition the venture capital community has increased its interest in starting companies based on university technology.”

HMS has been an early beneficiary of this increased interest, accounting for over 80 percent of Harvard’s tech transfer revenues last year.

McKay Professor of Applied Physics Jene A. Golovchenko says part of the reason that medical discoveries are responsible for most of the revenue is that drug companies are more willing to spend money on risky projects.

“I think the drug companies have been much more active in terms of interacting with universities,” he says. “I think they’re used to gambling.”

Advocates say everyone at Harvard stands to benefit from such profligate industry spending—for every sale brokered by the University, Harvard keeps 15 percent of royalties, the inventor’s school keeps 20 percent and the professor and his department keep the remaining 65 percent.

Selling Without Selling Out