At the core of this highly interactive, multi-faceted system (on- and offline) are SBIR Awardees: those of most direct business concern being Currently Active. Fully to understand the extent (and form) of SBIR-STTR Impact, it is useful to think of the Community as a whole.
- Federal Agencies: source of federal dollar and, each with their own agenda, often very different one from another even within a single agency. Mission Agencies: often functioning not unlike a Tech Seeker, a primary customer for developed technologies.
- State SBIR Support: data clearly suggests local access to quality support improves application and award rates -- and outcomes.
- Tech Seekers: personnel in Large/Mid-sized Corporations - and an increasing number of Public Service Entities - tasked with enabling effective access to relevant External Capabilities and disruptive new technologies. With SBIR-STTR Awardees increasingly understood as far and away the largest single concentration of technical talent, systematic and facilitated access into this talent pool is becoming a key factor in the patnering and bsuiness development endeavors of most Tech Seekers.
- Professional Service Providers: From proposal preparation to navigating complexities of federal procurement, from managing firm to transitioning developed technology to use-condition, from ensuring relevant ownership of what has been developed to enabling external relationships, for many Awardees (newcomer and experienced alike) effective SBIR involvement may periodically require access to a range of external expertise. With some areas of the country far better endowed than others with relevant expertise, experience and access to resources, using powerful modern tools and techniques, the effort here is to level the playing field.
The
Bu$ine$$ of SBIR-STTR: enabling effective engagement of SBIR talent
Offered by long-time SBIR advocate and chronicler
Ann Eskesen, this site - and the extensive
business development, tech transfer and
corporate partnering it supports on- and off-line - makes this
quite distinctly different from the most others having an SBIR-STTR interest and focus. It should be clearly underscored that this is
- NOT a site at all focused on getting SBIR-STTR awards
- NOR to addressing the detail of day-to-day program activity and management
Others are far better qualified to do that and, knowing that, some of the very best in that regard have a relevant presence here on this site.
Far more than simply documenting and analyzing primarily Awards Data -- distribution by Agency, Company and State -- here is a great deal on this Site that is
interesting and useful to SBIR-STTR interested parties - newcomer and oldcomer alike - having to do with
- the overall business condition and technology capacities of SBIR-STTR Awardees
- and - important for a politically created program - understanding, enabling and supporting SBIR's (considerable) economic impact
The primary emphasis here therefore is Two-Fold.
For SBIR Community Usage:
Systematic documentation and useful analysis of SBIR-STTR outcomes: individual and collective. See Tracking Elements graphic. Drawing down on a comprehensive range of factors tracked by idi on every SBIR-STTR involved firm (1983--present) in powerful, offline relational databases, effort here is to provide and enable important analytics and informatics: business- and policy-actionable intelligence.
* Business actionable: setting in context the options, opportunities and achievements of particular Awardee(s) - or relevant group - can provide useful reference points for other SBIR Player(s) in similar circumstances.
* Policy actionable: underscoring the fact that SBIR is so much more than 'just' a small business funding program; the achievement and impact far greater than that of individuals, the longtime idi effort has been to examine, enable and encourage understanding - and appreciation - of the substantial (game-changing?) collective impact that is (and for longtime has been) SBIR: technology, business and economic.
Congress might (should) be being educated into how (and why) to
build on what SBIR has created -- not simply reauthorize to continue doing basically the same thing that has been done for over Three Decades.
See recent
Congressional Testimony.
For Realizing SBIR Business Value:
Using powerful algorithms and related proprietary systems maintained entirely offline
pro-actively to
enable important business opportunity(ies) and
technology development collaborations between
- Large /Mid-sized corporations (and others) in their role as Tech Seekers
- and the specific, appropriately-qualified SBIR Awardee(s)
In today's business partnering, tech transfer and tech foraging space, ASSETs provides a powerful alternative the limited-value concepts of "CrowdSourcing" and Technology Showcasing. The idi developed ExPreS® capability - Expertise Precision Sourcing - enables identification of specific SBIR firm(s) having relevant skills sets and capabilites to take on particular Tech Seeker project(s). Using various delivery mechanisms, this highly focused, market-full system has already enabled a diversity of Working Relationships and achieved Capital Access factoring to more than $350M.
Currently SBIR-active players - small firms, agency personnel, professional service providers and Tech Seekers - may not be aware that implementation and maturation of SBIR as a resource and development in the US of what now constitutes Venture Capital occurred almost in tandem. Along with Bayh-Dole, the core-structure and the political-will to enable both came out of the first White House Small Conference of Small Business in 1980 -- itself part of a concerted effort to address the then dire straits that almost defined the US Economy through the 1970s.
The role of VC in today's SBIR space is very different .... but just as important.
In sum, far more than simply 'just another' SBIR-STTR awards data source, the business of Innovation Development Institute, LLC andof this SIte is more akin to a fully functioning SBIR Technology Clearing House with offered services and capabilities (on- and offline) comparable to the very best Technology Transfer Offices of the major academic and research institutions.
