Arizona Board of Regents already has a small interest in these companies through the licensing arrangement to the start-up but ASU does not take additional interest through the company's participation in the programme, the university said by email.

Melba Kurman, who did the research for the report Best US Universities for Innovation Transfer?, said most metrics counted contractual units of knowledge, such as patents, rather than how effectively universities translated federal research funding into new knowledge and new technologies.

Pakistan is to set up a network of offices of research, innovation and commercialisation at universities with training for intellectual property rights.

In partnership with the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University in Beijing and including Chinese teams from Tianjin and Zhejiang Universities as well as the Technion, which is the Israel Institute of Technology, the top prize went to EWalking.

Bambang Soehendro, a former director general of higher education at Indonesia's Education and Culture Ministry, said at a discussion on research held by University of Gadjah Mada (UGM): "Universities bear heavy burdens to self-finance a minimum of 25% of their financial needs. It is not logical and is unfair."