Responding to the emphasis of innovation and entrepreneurship in the knowledge-based economy, and the limited growth of governmental research expenditure, the higher education institutions (HEIs) are changing their structures and functions, and becoming the key actors to facilitate knowledge flows into the sources of industrial innovation. This paper constructs the accumulation of intellectual capital in terms of human capital, structural capital, and relationship capital, and investigates the impacts on research commercialization performance. Through a post questionnaire survey of R&D administers of 122 HEIs in Taiwan, a dataset of 64 valid HEIs is collected. The empirical results verify that human capital as the key dimension in fostering intellectual capital, stimulating the growth of patent grants, technology transfers, as well as entrepreneurial activities among HEIs. Structural capital and relationship capital are found to affect the outcomes of research commercialization differentially. Moreover, the different attribute of HEIs affects the approach of fostering intellectual capital. The paper discusses the implications of these results for university and government policymakers.