Until recently, entrepreneurship was relatively unheard of as a career path for graduate students and postdocs. Early-stage researchers were expected to remain in the laboratory, where producing results and publications was their priority. If the resultant technology had commercial potential, it was their supervisor who disclosed the invention to the university to patent and license, or left the university to start a company themselves. However, the traditional model for technology commercialization and entrepreneurship in universities is flawed in two ways. First, universities find that simply licensing patents to private companies yields poor results: either the licence fee is too high for the company, or the business is ill-equipped to fill the technological gap between the idea and its commercial success. Even the 1980 Bayh–Dole Act in the United States, which provided laws to facilitate commercialization, didn't help to generate the incentive and the tools needed.
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