Two weeks ago, NYU announced the formation of a new $20 million dollar venture fund to accelerate the transformation of ideas and discoveries by its students, faculty and researchers into start-up companies. We applaud the move, which directly reflects recommendations we made in our September 2009 report, Building New York City's Innovation Economy. Our report concluded that while New York City is home to several of the world's leading scientific research institutions, these universities and research centers have not yet become powerful catalysts for entrepreneurship and local economic development the way similar institutions have in a number of other regions. It argued that one of the biggest problems is that the leaders of the city's universities and nonprofit research centers have been slow to support efforts to spin off new tech ventures. Our main recommendations were targeted not at city policymakers, but at the universities themselves—and included specific suggestions for university leaders to "do more to support scientists that wish to go the start-up route" and to "get promising technologies into the hands of local entrepreneurs who would lean on the faculty inventor for scientific advice but use their own know-how and drive to bring a technology to market."