The Small Business Innovation Research Program: An Assessment of the Department of Defense Fast Track Initiative (2000)

Robert B. Archibald is a Professor of Economics at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Professor Archibald received a B.A. from the University of Arizona in 1968 and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1972 and 1974, respectively. Professor Archibald finished work on his doctoral dissertation as a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

After completing the requirements for his Ph.D., Professor Archibald spent two years as Research Economist at the Division of Price and Index Number Research of the Office of Prices of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He came to the College of William and Mary in 1976. At William and Mary he has served as Chair of the Department of Economics for five years, Interim Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for one year, and in the 2000-01 academic year he will be the Interim Director of the Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy.

Professor Archibald teaches macroeconomics, statistics, a seminar in behavioral economics, and microeconomics for public policy analysis. He has published over 20 papers in academic journals. His published research has covered many topics in economics including macroeconomics, index number construction, the economics of small business, the economics of energy, behavioral economics, rankings of economic journals, and federal R&D policy. He is currently doing research on the economics of financial aid in higher education as well as continuing his work on federal R&D policy.

David B. Audretsch is the Ameritech Chair of Economic Development and Director of the Institute for Development Strategies at Indiana University. He is also a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London). He was at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fuer Sozialforschung in Berlin, Germany, which is a government-funded research think tank between 1984 and 1997. Between 1989 and 1991 he served as Acting Director of the Institute. In 1991 he was named the Research Professor. Professor Audretsch’s research has focused on the links between entrepreneurship, government policy, innovation, economic development, and global competitiveness. He has consulted with the World Bank, the National Academy of Sciences, the Department of State, United States Federal Trade Commission, General Accounting Office, and International Trade Commission, as well as the United Nations, Commission of the European Union, the European Parliament, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and numerous private corporations, state governments, and a number of European governments. He is a member of the Advisory Board to a number of international research and policy institutes, including the Zentrum fuer Europaeisch Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW, Centre for Economic Research), Mannheim, the Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv (HWWA, Hamburg Institute of International Economics), and the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), Washington, D.C. His research has been published in over 100 scholarly articles in the leading academic journals. He has published 25 books including Innovation and Industry Evolution with MIT Press. He is founder and editor of the premier journal on small business and economic development, Small Business Economics: An International Journal.

Peter J. Cahill is a Senior Principal Analyst and Program Manager at BRTRC, Inc. In this position he has performed extensive analysis of and provided support to the Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR). Following an in-depth survey and series of interviews of DoD agencies and SBIR awardees, he conducted a two-year survey and interview study of the entire federal SBIR program for the Small Business Administration. He developed and implemented a Web-based system to measure past commercialization performance of SBIR firms as a part of the award evaluation process for DoD SBIR proposals. Other recent projects have included research and analysis of a number of military systems, including bridging, mine clearing, and battle simulation models. Prior to joining BRTRC, Inc., in 1993, Mr. Cahill ’s U.S. Army assignments included professor of management engineering at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Deputy Commander of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, and command and staff positions in construction, development, and engineering.

Dr. Cramer is a policy analyst at the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President. Prior to working at the federal level, he worked locally in the public and non-profit sectors. He received his doctorate from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin. During his doctoral studies, he served as a research associate for the International Workshop on Governance, a project sponsored by the Ford Foundation designed to promote international collaboration in the promotion of effective governance. In 1997, he was appointed to the City of Austin Telecommunications Commission. His research on economic development, urban planning, and affordable housing has recieved support from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Nonprofit Sector Research Fund of the Aspen Institute. He received his M.S. in city and regional planning from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and his bachelor of arts degree from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.

Maryann P. Feldman is Research Scientist at the Institute for Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She received her B.A. from Ohio State University and her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. She previously taught economics at Western Maryland College and Goucher College. Before coming to Hopkins, she was on the faculty at the H.J. Heinz School at Carnegie Mellon.

Maryann Feldman is the author of over 30 academic articles that have been published in such journals as the American Economic Review, The Review of Economics and Statistics, and The Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Her Ph.D. dissertation, The Geography of Innovation, was published in 1994 by Kluwer Academic Publishers. She is currently editing the forthcoming Handbook of Economic Geography for Oxford University Press. In addition, Maryann Feldman also served as book review editor of the journal, Growth and Change: An International Journal of Urban Policy.

Maryann Feldman has also served as a consultant to private business, various federal, state and local agencies and non-profit organizations. She has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Edison Electric Institute, among others. Forthcoming books by Dr. Feldman include Innovation Policy for a Knowledge-Based Economy (with A.N. Link) and The Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography (with G. Clark and M. Gertler).

David H. Finifter is Professor of Economics at The College of William and Mary. He is also director of the Center for Public Policy Research within the

Public Policy Program. He served as founding director of The Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy at William and Mary, a position he held from 1987-2000. His teaching and scholarly interests include the economics of education and public policy, human resource economics, evaluation and benefit/cost analysis, labor economics, science and technology policy, public health service delivery and finance, microeconomics applied to public policy analysis, and econometrics applied to public policy analysis. Dr. Finifter has been on the faculty at The College of William and Mary since completing his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Pittsburgh. He also holds a B.S. from Loyola College of Maryland and an M.A. in economics from the University of Pittsburgh. He has published several articles and reports in the area of evaluation of human resources and public policy on issues including federally subsidized employment and training programs, unemployment insurance policy, performance standards for employment and training programs, veterans’ job training programs, and the Job Corps program. He has also published research on workplace literacy and productivity. He has co-edited two books on higher education and public policy and a special edition of the Quarterly Review of Economics and Business on health care policy. He has served as a consultant to several federal government agencies, including the United States Department of Labor, the Veterans Administration, NASA, Sandia National Laboratories, and the Environmental Protection Agency. During 1978-79, he served as a Staff Associate in Employment Policy at the Brookings Institution and the United States Department of Labor. During the summer of 1995, he served as a faculty summer fellow, American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) at NASA Langley Research Center, and worked on technology transfer policy and performance measurement/metrics. His research over the past few years has emphasized work in collaboration with Dr. Robert Archibald on the Small Business Innovation Research Program including an evaluation of the SBIR Program at NASA Langley Research Center.

John Horrigan served as Program Officer at the STEP Board from 1998 to February 2000 where he worked on several reports that are part of the “Government-Industry Partnerships for the Development of New Technologies” project, including volumes on the Advanced Technology Program, the Sandia Science and Technology Park, U.S./European Union science and technology cooperation, and government-industry partnerships in biotechnology and computing. He is presently Senior Research Specialist at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which conducts research into how the Internet is affecting Americans’ day-to-day lives. In addition to helping design surveys of Internet usage patterns at Pew, Horrigan conducts research into the social and economic impact of the Internet on communities. Horrigan has also served as a consultant to the World Resources Institute, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and Texas Perspectives

of Austin, Texas. He received a B.A. in Economics and Government from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to receiving his Ph.D., Horrigan served as Press Secretary and Legislative Assistant to U.S. Representative J.J. Pickle.

Josh Lerner is a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the Finance and Entrepreneurial Management Units. He graduated from Yale College with a special divisional major that combined physics with the history of technology. He worked for several years on issues concerning technological innovation and public policy, at the Brookings Institution, for a public-private task force in Chicago, and on Capitol Hill. He then undertook his graduate study at Harvard’s Economics Department.

Professor Lerner’s research focuses on the structure of venture capital organizations and their role in transforming scientific discoveries into commercial products. Much of his research is collected in his co-authored volume, The Venture Capital Cycle, published by MIT Press in 1999. He also examines the effects of intellectual property protection, particularly patents, on the competitive strategies of firms in high-technology industries. He is a Research Associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Corporate Finance and Productivity Programs, and serves as Co-Organizer of the Innovation Policy and the Economy Group.

In the 1993-94 academic year, he introduced an elective course for second-year MBAs on private equity finance. The course materials are collected in Venture Capital and Private Equity: A Casebook, John Wiley & Sons, 1999. He serves as the Business School’s representative on the Harvard University Patent, Trademark and Copyright Committee and as Faculty Chair of the Focused Financial Management Series, a set of targeted executive education courses on current issues in finance.

Albert N. Link is Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He received his B.S. in mathematics from the University of Richmond in 1971 and his Ph.D. in economics from Tulane University in 1976. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1982, he was on the faculty at Auburn University and was scholar in residence at Syracuse University.

Professor Link’s research focuses broadly on the economics of science and technology policy. His publications encompass many dimensions of that field ranging from philosophy of science to the mathematical theory of productivity

growth. More specifically, he has written extensively on methods for evaluating public sector and private sector research and development, technology policies to promote economic growth, and corporate strategies to increase competitiveness.

Professor Link has served on data and evaluation advisory panels of the National Academy of Sciences, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and government agencies such as the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He has also consulted for numerous European Union and APEC governments on science policy and program evaluation.

Among his most recent books are Public Accountability: Evaluating Technology-Based Institutions (with John T. Scott), A Generosity of Spirit: The Early History of Research Triangle Park, and Evaluating Public Sector Research and Development. His scholarly papers have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, Research Policy, STI Review, and the International Journal of Industrial Organization. Professor Link is also the editor of the international Journal of Technology Transfer.

John T. Scott received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and holds the position of Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. His research is in the areas of industrial organization and the economics of technological change. He has served as the President of the Industrial Organization Society and on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Industrial Organization, the Review of Industrial Organization, and the Journal of Industrial Economics. He has consulted in matters of technology policy for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and he has served as an economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and at the Federal Trade Commission.

Claudia Weigand is currently a Researcher for the Dutch Central Bank in Amsterdam and an Ameritech Research Fellow at the Institute for Development Strategies at Indiana University. She also served as an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Erlangen-N ürnberg from 1994-1998 where she earned her doctoral degree in economics. Her principal research interests include banking supervision and prudential regulation.

Dr. Weigand is the author of Bank Lending and Product Market Competition, (Hamburg: Dr. Kovac, 1998) and co-authored “Internationalization and the Spatial Structure of Markets” (with David Audretsch) in Corporate Strategies in

Domestic and Globalizing Markets (Hans-Eckart Scharrer, ed., Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1999).

Juergen Weigand is a Professor of Economics at the Otto Beisheim School of Management (Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Unternehmensf ührung WHU) in Koblenz-Vallendar, Germany, and an Advisor to the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis in The Hague. He previously served as an Ameritech Research Scholar at the Institute for Development Strategies at Indiana University. His research interests include industrial organization, economics of finance and banking, corporate governance, economics of sports, and competition policy.

Dr. Weigand is the author of many articles which have been published in journals such as Kredit und Capital and DIW-Vierteljahreshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung. He is also the author of three books including Innovation, Competition, and the Business Cycle, (Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 1996). Among his forthcoming works are “Market Size, Fixed Costs and Horizontal Concentration” (with Manfred Neumann, Alexandra Gross, and Markus Münter) in the International Journal of Industrial Organization and “Does the Governed Corporation Perform Better? Governance Structures and the Market for Corporate Control in Germany” (with Erik Lehmann) in the European Finance Review. He has also made conference presentations for organizations including the American Economic Association and European Economic Association and recently was invited to make a seminar presentation before the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve System.

Dr. Weigand holds both a doctoral and post-doctoral degree in economics from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Dr. Wessner is the Director of the Program on Technology and Competitiveness for the National Research Council’s Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy. Dr. Wessner began his federal career with the U.S. Treasury, served overseas as an international civil servant with the OECD and as a senior officer with the U.S. Diplomatic Corps, and directed the Office of International Technology Policy in the Technology Administration of the Department of Commerce. Since joining the National Research Council, he has led several major studies working closely with the senior levels of the U.S. government, leading industrialists, and prominent academics. Recent work includes a White House-initiated study on “The Impact of Offsets on the U.S. Aerospace Industry” and a major international study on “Competition and Cooperation in National Competition for High Technology Industry” in cooperation with the HWWA in Hamburg and the IFW in Kiel, Germany.

Currently, he is directing a portfolio of activities centered around “Government-Industry Partnerships for the Development of New Technologies ” and initiating work on “Measuring and Sustaining the New Economy.” The Partnerships program constitutes one of the first program-based efforts to assess U.S. policy on government-industry partnerships. Recent publications include Conflict and Cooperation in National Competition for High Technology Industry, Policy Issues in Aerospace Offsets, International Friction and Cooperation in High-Technology Development and Trade, Trends and Challenges in Aerospace Offsets, New Vistas in Transatlantic Science and Technology Cooperation, Industry-Laboratory Partnerships: A Review of the Sandia Science and Technology Park Initiative, The Advanced Technology Program: Challenges and Opportunities, and The Small Business Innovation Research Program: Challenges and Opportunities. Dr. Wessner holds degrees in International Affairs from Lafayette College (Phi Beta Kappa) and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy where he obtained an M.A., an M.A.L.D., and a Ph.D. as a Shell Fellow.

A member of the faculty of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, since 1979, Robert Wilson holds the Mike Hogg Professorship of Urban Policy. He teaches local and state economic development policy, technology policy, applied econometrics, public policy in Brazil, and local governance in developing countries. He was Assistant Dean at the LBJ School from 1980 through 1983 and served as the Coordinator of the Ph.D. Program in Public Policy from 1991 through 1994. Dr. Wilson has served as the Director of the Urban Issues Program, a university-wide program based in the Office of the Provost, since 1995, and Director of the Brazil Center since 2000. His most recent books include States and the Economy: Policymaking and Decentralization, and Public Policy and Community: Activism and Governance in Texas. Before coming to UT, Wilson taught urban planning at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil. During the spring of 1999, Wilson held the International Philips Chair at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo, Brazil. During the summer of 2000, Wilson held the Fulbright/FLAD Chair in Knowledge Management and Policy at the Institute Tecnico Superior in Lisbon. He served as Fulbright Fellow in Belo Horizonte, Brazil and as a United States Information Agency Lecturer in Brazil and Argentina and has served as a consultant to the United Nations Development Program, Organization of American States, National Research Council, Urban Institute, Texas Legislative Education Board, and Texas Historical Commission. He holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania.