University researchers often have no idea how to get the science they've developed to the marketplace where it can benefit real people.

Most prefer to stay in the lab and let university officials bring in off-campus entrepreneurs to create companies to market that research.

A decade before he came to the University of Utah as dean of the David Eccles School of Business, Jack Brittain started to think about another way of creating business ventures based on university-developed technology.

"We wanted to ... support the research mission, the educational mission and the service mission of the university," he said.

When he got to Utah in 1999, he found a receptive environment for this approach.

"There was power for the educational experience and power for the commercial side, as well," said Brittain, 56, who started out wearing hats as business school dean and head of the U.'s Venture Technology Development program. In 2005, after the arrival of University President Michael Young, Brittain was elevated to vice president and stayed on as dean until this past July.

Bringing business school students into the commercialization equation is rare nationally. Most programs are conducted away from the university and do not involve students.

Joe Tanous, who wears the title "innovation liaison" at Corvallis-based Oregon State University, said: "There are institutions in other areas that are working on different pieces" of the U. commercialization structure. "But nobody does it quite like they do, and that's because of Jack Brittain."

The U.'s venture development numbers show that 78 of the 83 companies launched by students and researchers during the past four years are still operating. Seventy are Utah-based. These companies have created about 300 jobs that pay typical salaries of $85,000 a year.

Most business school students who participate at the Lassonde New Venture Development Center on the upper campus are at the graduate level. Some have campus research projects assigned to them; others ferret out marketable research on their own and bring it to the program.

"It forces them to integrate the knowledge from all of their classes," Brittain said. "Students can understand the math of their finance class, principles of management, and of markets and marketing," but that alone does not make them knowledgeable about the real world of business.

Brittain said the idea for the relationship between academics and the business world began to take hold in his mind 10 years before he came to the University of Utah.

While at the University of Texas, Dallas, "I started developing ideas of this kind of integration," he said. Coming to Utah provided "one of the great convergences of my career," melding students with researchers and building real companies.

"Without [President] Young's support, it never would have happened."

Tanous said Utah's success can be traced to its entrepreneurial culture, whether associated with the U. or private industry.

Brittain "has successful entrepreneurs in his flock," Tanous said. "He puts them all together " with the right research, "and they are very 'fundable' people. Some think that venture capitalists are drawn to invest because the technology is so strong. That's not true. Venture capitalists take very little technology risk; they are drawn to the [strengths of] people involved.

"Usually, one out of seven such ventures are successful," Tanous said. Brittain's "results are much higher and absolutely amazing."

jkeahey@sltrib.com