Why Should I Care About SBIR?

Why Should I Care About SBIR?

The combined Federal SBIR Program is expected to be more than $2.1 billion this year alone and they have to spend it on something.

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program is a congressionally mandated program which sets aside a portion of a federal agency’s research and development (R&D) money to make awards to small businesses. Federal agencies are bound by a statute, there is a “SBIR Law,” that requires them to spend the appropriate level of money each fiscal year. Even though there is a single law which outlines the requirements for a SBIR Program, each of the Departments/Agencies implements their individual SBIR Program in a slightly different manner. To spend the money required each year, the agencies generate a set of research topics that appear in an open solicitation. Some Departments have more than one solicitation during a fiscal year. The DoD has 3 SBIR solicitations a year.

The four overarching objectives of the SBIR Program are:

• Stimulate technological innovation;
  
  
• Use small business to meet Federal R&D needs;
  
  
• Foster and encourage participation by socially and economically disadvantaged small business concerns, and by small business concerns that are 51-percent owned and controlled by women, in technological innovation; and
  
  
• Increase private sector commercialization of innovations derived from Federal R&D, thereby increasing competition, productivity and economic growth.
  

Not all of the research topics are related to manufacturing technologies. In fact, most of the SBIR topics have nothing to do with manufacturing. AMT's Technology Department finds topics in each solicitation that might be of interest to the overall general membership. There will always be at least one topic to which you can submit a proposal outlining how your existing technology can be applied to address a new application. Another approach would be to consider how you can make significant improvements on an existing technology. The key aspect that your proposal needs to address is --- INNOVATION.