The old adage, “we become/are what we measure” can push behavior of individuals and organizations into unanticipated negative space when the selected key performance indicators take on too much importance — sometimes amazingly negative space that becomes common practice and potentially damaging for the entire industry. Counting life science startups created through the licensing work of technology transfer offices (TTOs) at the nation’s research universities appears to be the latest example of KPI (key performance indicator) pursuit potentially going bad, based on a recent Nature Biotechnology article.