The path that leads from inspiration to invention—and on to commercial success, if all goes well—can be a long and winding road. The co-inventor of the Gene Gun, John Sanford, regressed to his youth and tried to propel DNA with a kid’s air rifle, before Cornell engineers helped the plant scientist find a better way.

Turfgrass expert Frank Rossi, PhD ’92 killed more grass than he painted on the way to inventing removable stripes for athletics fields. And a lot of dust was on the jelly jars by the time the “Nobel Prize for Fruit Breeding” went to Cornell’s ‘Heritage’ red raspberry—35 years after the then-new variety went public.

Despite the disappointments, the setbacks, and delayed gratification, Cornell inventors somehow persevere. Dedicated to the technology-transfer concept, they continue to believe that university-grown knowledge is too valuable to keep on the campus.

Some profit handsomely from their endeavors (the gene gun inventors, for example) and others, following the land-grant model of knowledge as public service, never see a nickel for their life’s work. From the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences archives of innovation, here are some success stories....