The changing face of university technology transfer

Highlights:

For university licenses of technologies all across the board if we can assume a average royalty of 2%¹.
Of the revenue that come in to the university, only about 25% gets to be retained by technology transfer offices.
On an annual basis the university needs to generate $20M in revenues coming in to the university (so that $5M comes back into technology transfer).
To generate the $20M in revenues at a 2% royalty rate, $1B in annual sales of products is necessary. (if royalty income alone is considered)
There are more than 200 TTOs, which report their licensing results to AUTM on an annual basis. Most are small offices, but still you are looking for >$80 billion dollar in sale of products for these offices to just break even, if average spend is $2 million in operating expenses. I am not saying it is impossible, but it is not an easy task.
The total licensing income for TTOs in FY15 was $2.5 B as reported by AUTM. That is an equivalent to $125B in product sales stemming from university intellectual property. Not bad for early stage university technologies, huh?

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