In 1907, Frederick Cottrell, professor of chemistry at the University of California-Berkeley and father of the modern academic patent, worried that if universities became too directly involved in patenting and licensing operations, their thirst for profits could lead to the erosion of the openness necessary for academic science to flourish. For another 70 years, most universities stayed out of the commercialization business. By the 1980s, however, government enactment of the Bayh-Dole Act, the rise of biotechnology, and pressure to realize new sources of revenue to support the academic enterprise led to a complete reversal of course. Today, most research universities and a growing number of comprehensive institutions have well-developed technology-transfer programs, replete with staffs of licensing professionals (which more than doubled between 1996 and 2005) and a burgeoning array of support elements, including seed-capital funds to support start-up companies, business incubators, and related economic-development infrastructure. In the current economic climate, federal and state policymakers are desperate to get the economy going again, and see universities, with their innovative capacities, as key drivers of economic transformation. Thus, university leaders would be irresponsible not to consider new and expanded ways to further leverage their institutions' most valuable asset--the intellectual capital of their faculty--in ways that can help achieve this goal. In this article, the authors report their longitudinal research on the odds of success given a particular university's R&D and licensing enterprise capacity. This research provides a new lens through which the financial-benefits issue can be viewed on campus. Data analyses suggest the need for institutional leaders and policy makers to rethink the purpose of technology transfer, one that moves away from a focus on revenues and the pursuit of the elusive blockbuster, operates at an appropriate scale, and has a broader emphasis on developing university-industry relationships for mutual success. (Contains 4 figures and 7 resources.)