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The Business of Phase III is a comprehensive technology development and technology transfer system offering online and offline components - all to address effective and efficient drawing down of the value of what SBIR-STTR has created. This multi-layered approach effectively and efficiently brings together
pre-qualified SBIR-STTR Awardees interested in developing various external business connections and relationships
and various Tech Seekers - those personnel in large and mid-sized firms, and others tasked with actively seeking external relationships with appropriately qualfied parties.
Consistent with the range of collaborative relationships already engaging SBIR-STTR Awardees and other firms, outcomes from needs-driven matches made here include everything from * occasional interactions for business discussion, through * sub-contracting on SBIR-STTR awards and/or * collaborations on other federally funded projects * contract research projects * teaming * cross-licensing and other IP-based transactions * service contracts * product purchases * equity participation through * acquisition.
Business of Phase III in context:
Though SBIR funding is calculated as a percentage of extramural R&D funding in participating federal agencies, from the outset SBIR was never intended to be a research endeavor. The effort has always been to support problem-oriented work with an emphasis on having the results of that work go to use-condition. Given that there is (currently) no direct SBIR funding after Phase II, tackling the Business of Phase III -- particularly accessing the additional resources most often required to complete the innovation process -- has become perhaps the major SBIR-STTR challenge.
Positing a rather different way of addressing this all-important technology development requirement is the specific focus of this part of the site.
Market-Pull versus Technology-Push:
With Congressional focus to achieving the 'commercialization' objective in SBIR, several agencies have moved towards assisting awardees to address the task of achieving Phase III. External contractors have been recruited to provide access to skills development programs with, more recently, events organized, now often on a quite major scale, to allow presentation by awardees of their perceived business opportunity, to enable one-on-one interaction and to expose representatives of larger firms and financial community to the wealth of technologies being developed by SBIR-STTR Awardees.
These efforts undoubtedly are useful and have had some positive impact. However, the realities of technology development in the business world suggest that the technology-push implicit in these approaches is probably less than fully effective in getting most of what SBIR-STTR Awardees have to viable use-condition.
For SBIR Awardees, therefore, the far more difficult Phase III challenge is often proving to be that of getting a handle on what those needs are and - where there is a potential match - having timely opportunity to interact with those having appropriate decision-making authority. The managers of this site - and the extensive offline network of technology transfer specialists that supports it - are uniquely positioned to address this challenge and focused explicitly to providing the tools and resources to enable that task.
Matching need to capability:
From a strong market-pull premise, the organizing principle for this part of the site is efficiently and effectively to connect serious Technology Seekers to those specific SBIR-involved firm(s) which have
--EITHER already developed, or have made major progress towards, what particular Tech Seekers may be looking for
--AND/OR have the demonstrated skill-sets which suggest that they could be engaged to work effectively to that end.
In other words, both online and off-, what happens here is grounded in meeting the needs of the customer. That is supported by our working directly with those personnel primarily in larger and mid-sized tasked with bringing in from outside the technologies and skills sets that their company's need.
Underpinnning this effort and the capacity to make effective matches of expressed need to demonstrated capability are powerful, proprietary SBIR-STTR relational databases developed and maintained by us as long-time, leading SBIR advocates in the private sector. Accurate and complete to the most recently announced SBIR-STTR awards, this comprehensive, cross-agency system supports offline, rapid keyword-search through all project Abstracts, Issued Patents and citations, detailed Company Profiles, in-depth Capability Statements, Business and Financial Condition (to include VC, IPO, M&A), in-place collaborative agreements, a full range of classification systems and analyses, Personnel Bios, Working papers, news releases and featured articles etc
A la Carte or Fixed Price options:
Subscription: For many of those using this site and working with idi on an ongoing basis - searching, posting, downloading, event participation, offline preparation of custom reports, special support services etc - the cost-effective preference is clearly for a retainer relationship. To that end, most are taking out a Site Subscription at a level appropriate to their needs.
Rather than our pre-determining what services they may wish to utilize by level of subscription, this part of the site is set up with what is effectively a Cafeteria of Services each with a point value. Each subscription brings a number of points which can used to 'buy' those services the user needs.
a la carte: For less active users of the site, a viable alternative is to buy specifically what services they need when they need it. All available products and services are by-unit priced accordingly and can be paid for online in a well-secured transaction process.
