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to enable documentation of the SBIR-STTR
Business and Economic Impact story
in support of Reauthorization:
The SBIR-STTR Achievement series
Help underwrite the development cost for a comprehensive series of informational pamphlets (10-15 pages each). Closely tied into the Two-Cents effort to support reauthorization, the series are
- to be put out there for general use in telling the SBIR story to the Congress, to the Media and within the Community itself with a program-wide approach that is currently not available from anywhere else
- to empower the grass-roots awardee base that, if properly marshalled and supported, in my judgment is our most powerful - largely unused - asset and
- to anchor and open up the discussion of what may be the most important SBIR reauthorization now underway
- to empower the grass-roots awardee base that, if properly marshalled and supported, in my judgment is our most powerful - largely unused - asset and
The decision is being left to each potential supporter to decide how much each feel able to contribute to this analytical-educational-lobbying effort. Commitments so far have ranged from token ($25-$100), to a few hundred dollars to the largest being $5K. Any and all contributions are gratefully received and obviously, if SBIR has been important to you, we hope you can see your way to being generous.
As you can probably appreciate, this is not an inexpensive endeavor. Through the years we have been on the SBIR advocacy front-line many times - largely pro-bono. More recently, we have been routinely providing lots of our data to support the testimony and Congressional input of others into reauthorization related matters. This project, however, is much bigger than that. It is clear that some of the 'big-picture' and topic-specific analyses only we can do would be of major value. The extent to which we can work our way down the list of proposed pamphlets over the next few months - see listing in graphic above - will be driven by how much we are able to raise from this request for support.
The databases which underpin this proposed effort are already in place, developed and maintained from our company and personal resources. That endeavor has been long in the making, very expensive (c. $2.5M) but is now a sunk cost. Here, the effort is to seek the financial support specifically required to put these powerful resources to work even more directly than they are already in support of continued, effective SBIR operations.
Please be aware that, unless you opt specifically for anonymity, your contribution to, and sponsorship of, this effort will be acknowledged in the published series in print and online and in all related publicity.
What are the databases?The SBIR-STTR Achievement Series, as proposed, is grounded in powerful, sophisticated, relational databases tracking an extensive range of business conditions and technology capabilities data on every awardee over life of the program - now 16,760 firms, 73,593 Phase I awards, and a federal investment of $22,378,889,504 (June 2007).
As many of you already know, our systematically keeping the SBIR record was initiated soon after passage of the original enabling legislation with initial focus simply to tracking award dollars in a single government-wide system. Subsequently, this privately funded project has evolved to become the most comprehensive relational record available anywhere documenting the condition and achievement of every SBIR awardee - tracking, in effect, what we can readily show to be the largest single concentration of technical talent. Usefully for this project, all data can be readily broken out by any number of variables, including by Congressional district.
- The databases are anchored in the complete (and accurate) detail of every SBIR-STTR award up to, and including, the most recently announced. This single-source, powerful system being used increasingly by federal personnel and by those with Tech Seeking responsibility in many larger and mid-sized corporation.
- With paid access into a range of dedicated third-party specialist databases and extensive use of powerful investigatoryand analytical tools, we also now routinely compile in exquisite detail, important information about every awardee over the life of the program. This includes the full range of business and technology capability information - all patents, patent citations and associated detail; comprehensive capability statements; various technology and business classification systems; the detail of all venture capital activity; M&A transactions; spin-off ventures; all matters related to the publicly traded; in-place alliances; professional papers; fairly comprehensive business condition analyses; bios of principals etc etc
What will my contribution be used for?
The funding being sought through this contact to you will support the extensive professional and staff time required to use these databases to enable timely production of the proposed SBIR-STTR Achievement Series. Explicitly, these will document, as frankly no-one else can, the substantial business and economic impact of the SBIR-STTR programs. Offering a quite different 'take' on these important technology development programs from almost anything currently available, we think these could serve well to make the useful -- and, we would argue, much needed -- shift
- from thinking of SBIR as just another 'small business' program
- towards systematic consideration of SBIR as a major technology development resource with powerful economic and business development impact.
Why is there a need to do this?
Probably better than most, you understand that collectively the SBIR Community are relatively apolitical. These are talented scientists and engineers rarely called upon to be active in the political space and completely unprepared to function in that space. The fact of SBIR having been created at all and functioning as effectively as it does, is credit primarily to the ongoing efforts of a few individuals - almost entirely volunteer - the support of some interested larger players along the way and, more recently, the active leadership of the as-yet small membership of SBTC. In a very real sense, there is no sustained, SBIR lobbying effort.
So long as SBIR was a small-scale effort, this lack of a sustained SBIR voice, was not toomuchof a problem. As the scope and scale of SBIR has increased and importance and value of program participation has become more widely known, some with a substantial and powerful Washington presence have entered the arena - not always with the best interests of the majority awardees to the forefront of their efforts. Similarly, others with a vested interest in how the program have been working for them, are actively engaged in setting up the context for this reauthorization.
As one of that very small group still around from the original political effort in 1982, and with extensive involvement in reauthorization in 1986 and in 1992, it would be my considered judgment that
- EITHER the SBIR Community - more broadly defined - be provided the resources to take hold of the current reauthorization effort and set for themselves the primary agenda from which the effort will proceed
- OR that agenda will be largely set for them. Should that happen - as it has so often previously - primary focus will be on reacting and responding to matters raised by others, some (but not all) being well intentioned
can we count on your support to put the future of
SBIR in the hands of those most affected?
_______
Background to reauthorization:
On September 30, 2008, the enabling legislation for the federal SBIR program will sunset. The Fourth SBIR Reauthorization must be addressed by this 110th Congress on or before that date. No-one would want a repeat of horrors of 2000 when the SBIR authorizing legislation ran out September 30, 2000, and final passage was not accomplished until the closing minutes of that Congress in December that year. We must do a better job of taking back control of the political agenda that is SBIR if we are to ensure passage before Congress scatter to the winds of a Presidential election year.
This time around, going back to the 109th Congress, there has been informal discussion in many settings about the task to hand. Particular Congressional staff have spent considerable time laying useful groundwork. Hearings have already been held on a few high-profile related topics. Various issues - from the SBIR eligibility of the venture-funded companies, to proposals in the Defense appropriations bill for major increases in funds for related support services - have already been 'out there' for some time to which SBIR advocates and supporters have been actively responding.
Nothing seriously untoward has so far been allowed to happen. A number of factors, however, become eminently clear.
- There has been considerable Congressional turnover and even greater turnover among their staff. A quite remarkably large percentage of Members know very little, if anything, about SBIR and its impact in their districts. A very important task which must define current reauthorization effort is Member (and staff) education. Without this, what Members know about SBIR will be what they hear from others, or nothing.
- The world is a very different place since the collapse of the markets a few years ago and even more so from the world of 1992, truly the last time that any serious look was taken at how SBIR actually works. There is a strong need to update SBIR options e.g. to encourage and support teamed projects; to empower the agencies to experiment in areas like differential project timing and funding levels.
- Many (most?) SBIR-STTR are stumbling badly in the process of transitioning their technologies into real use-condition - and the range of support services being offered with often every good intent by the agencies are not addressing that implicit problem.
This reauthorization is the time to address this component
- - if not now, when?
- ... and, perhaps even more critically, if not you, then who?
