The last 50 years have seen an increasing dependence on academic institutions to develop and commercialize new biomedical innovations, a responsibility for which many universities are ill-equipped. To address this need, we created LEAP, an asset development and gap fund program at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL). Beyond awarding funds to promising projects, this program aimed to promote a culture of academic entrepreneurship, and thus improve WUSTL technology transfer, by providing university inventors with individualized consulting and industry expert feedback. The purpose of this work is to document the structure of the LEAP program and evaluate its impact on the WUSTL entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our analysis utilizes program data, participant surveys, and WUSTL technology transfer office records to demonstrate that LEAP consistently attracted new investigators and that the training provided by the program was both impactful and highly valued by participants. We also show that an increase in annual WUSTL start-up formation during the years after LEAP was established and implicate the program in this increase. Taken together, our results illustrate that programs like LEAP could serve as a model for other institutions that seek to support academic entrepreneurship initiatives.

Universities in China have increased their entrepreneurship significantly, yet a good understanding of the specific characteristics of university-based technology transfers remains missing. This study focuses on a special type of university spinoffs in China, University-Run Enterprises (UREs), and examines how URE eminence contributes to a university's technology transfer performance, using panel data covering 195 universities over the five years from 2002 to 2006. The findings reveal that URE eminence not only signifies a university's strong entrepreneurial culture, but also signals commercial values and quality of the university research. It moderates the contribution of university scientists from the supply side and that of sourcing firms from the demand side.