"If you consider the average salary, it would add up to hundreds of millions of dollars," Carney said. "So we've had quite an impact."

Utah State's ties between research and industry have taken a different tack. Steve Kubisen, vice president of USU's Research Foundation, noted that many companies with which the university has ties were formed before the university had a technology transfer office. They include HyClone Laboratories, the Space Dynamics Lab, Campbell Scientific and Sorenson Media.

"Those initial ones were really based on university know-how and not a patented technology that was licensed out to start the company," he said. "Those businesses have basically come out of a nonpatented technology or leveraging the know-how of the university, as opposed to licensing a patent that has come out of the university."

Still, the university has at least a "know-how" affiliation with nearly 50 companies. Combined, they have more than 1,000 workers and about $300 million in annual sales. The vast majority have only a handful of workers.

"Most of the companies are what I would classify as 'mom and pop' types of companies — few employees, provides a good standard of living for those few employees but doesn't leverage the technology and produce the more significant economic impacts that we're really striving for," Kubisen said.

But the university's tech transfer office, known as the Technology Commercialization Office, is trying to become more proactive. Kubisen said license deals and spin-outs this year could be up three to four times the historical average. And a scorecard of commercialization opportunities that a couple of years ago had only 16 listed now has 38, "and we plan to have many more as we go forward," he said.

Lynn Astle, director of the technology transfer office at BYU, described the juggling act his office faces as it handles the differing priorities of the technology stakeholders: faculty, institutions, the community and companies/licensees.

Faculty priorities include reputation-building, independence, research funding and income.

Institutions, meanwhile, want to support their faculty, build their own reputations, garner revenue and avoid liabilities.

"As an institution, our main objective is really to keep our faculty happy and provide an environment where they can work well," he said. "We also like to look at the institution's reputation, and we're also interested in revenue. We'd like to fund other programs at the university."

The community looks to find ways to improve their lot, in part through higher average incomes from job creation. Companies' goals are growth, profit margin and a return to investors.