University President Lawrence H. Summers added detail and dimension to his vision of Boston as a mecca for life science research Friday, before an audience of Boston’s biggest business and political leaders.

Along with MIT President Charles M. Vest, Summers discussed how to stimulate the state’s biotech industry and to foster a bustling university-industry collaboration along the lines of Northern California’s Silicon Valley to an audience at the Business School’s Hawes Hall.

In order to better facilitate the movement of technologies from University labs to commercial development, Summers said that Provost Steven E. Hyman would lead an examination into the intellectual property and so-called “tech transfer” policies of the University.

“It is not just an abstraction for science, humanity and the national and global economy, but a reality for the success of our institutions and the success of this area—how we exploit our progress in the life sciences,” Summers said during his speech.

And while he added that the University would be careful not to compromise its academic principles, Summers questioned the sort of caution and conservatism that has typically marked Harvard’s interaction with industry.

“We must be prepared to work cooperatively with the private sector. We must recognize that, and this is why these issues are not easy, that conflict of interest is one side of the coin, and synergy is the other,” he said.

Summers also spoke generally of the need to increase the emphasis on science across the University, including at schools where science is not traditionally part of the curriculum, like Harvard Law School. He referenced existing plans to expand Harvard’s engineering and applied sciences division, where marketable technologies are often born.

Despite the conference’s location, across the river in Allston, Summers did not explicitly mention planning for Harvard’s campus of the future to be built there. A leading option for the land involves building science facilities, and the possibility of a corporate science park on or abutting University land has been discussed in the past.

University Professor Michael Porter, the star economist who Summers tapped to organize the event, said that—despite Massachusetts’ pre-eminence in the life sciences—government, universities and companies need to better leverage their expertise at a time when other regions are feverishly seeking to attract biotech development.

“We don’t have to claw our way to the top,” Porter said. “Our task is to preserve our leadership.”

Porter drew attention to a number of drawbacks hindering business growth in Massachusetts, including the high cost of living and doing business, as well as difficulties in getting state approval for new infrastructure.

Unlike 41 other states, Massachusetts does not yet have an official life sciences initiative, but Porter said that the region’s “pre-eminent” cluster of institutions and private industry could serve as a springboard for growth.

Porter, who is an unofficial advisor to the state’s governor and has spent much of his career studying such clusters, said that Massachusetts could gain as many as 100,000 jobs in the life sciences sector if it better exploited its concentration of expertise.

While much of the summit’s language was general, some debate lingered over the particular roles that government should play in affecting growth in the biotech sector.

Aside from loosening regulations related to site construction, Porter said Massachusetts could attract more companies to the area by aiding small firms directly with funds from the federal settlement with tobacco companies.