An Assessment of the SBIR Program at the Department of Energy (2008) / Chapter Skim
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Based on these three documents, the NRC Committee developed a comprehensive and agreed set of practical objectives to be reviewed. These are outlined in the Committee's formal Methodology Report, particularly Chapter 3, "Clarifying Study Objectives." National Research Council, An Assessment of the Small Business Innovation Research Program: Project Methodology, Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2004.
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, Congress expanded the purposes to "emphasize the program's goal of increasing private sector commercialization developed through federal research and development and to improve the federal government's dissemination of information concerning small business innovation, particularly with regard to woman-owned business concerns and by socially and economically disadvantaged small business concerns." See, for example, Box 1-1 in Chapter 1 of this report, which lists the multiple sources of bias found in large innovation surveys.
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As host for the SBIR office, DoE's Office of Science is responsible for the direct costs of administering the program: salaries for the federal employees, support services contracts, and costs such as developing and maintaining the electronic grant management system. Because the Office of Science must use its own funds to administer the SBIR program, and because of the historical resistance to SBIR at DoE, there has been a tendency for the Office of Science to limit the resources for administering the Public Law 102-564.
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Low funding figure S-1 levels for administration mean however that the DoE SBIR staff devotes nearly all their time to managing the processes for generating technical topics, and for receiving, evaluating, and selecting grant applications. This leaves little time for activities such as outreach, measuring Phase III activity, encouraging Phase III activity (both within and outside the Department, including the national laboratories)
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The SBIR program at DoE supports knowledge transfer in several ways. A significant number of the projects responding to the NRC Phase II Survey (43 percent)
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More than 80 percent of DoE NRC Phase II Survey respondents reported that they See Table 4-14 in National Research Council, An Assessment of the Small Business Innovation Research Program, Charles W Wessner, ed., Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2008.
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Data for Phase II are similar, although slightly lower. On average, woman- and minority owned firms won 22.1 percent of Phase I awards from 2001-2005, and 19.1 percent of Phase II awards.14 o Lagging application success rates.
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The NRC Phase II sur vey data indicate that 41 percent of SBIR-funded projects reach the marketplace or have commercialization underway.17 Of the DoE SBIR award recipient firms that responded to the NRC Phase II Survey and reported sales of some type, 76 percent sold to domestic private sector firms and 14 percent to export markets.18 The NRC Phase II Survey data also show that a much smaller num ber (4 percent) of projects generate more than $5 million in revenues.19 However, as in cases where the market is inherently limited -- as with sensitive energy technologies -- products developed with DoE SBIR assistance often cannot become large commercial successes.20 o Commercialization support.
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DoE should also develop procedures to track the rela tionship between National Laboratories and the SBIR program more formally, including the documentation of Phase III successes. • Increase participation by woman- and minority-owned firms.26 o DoE should undertake an assessment of the participation rates of woman- and minority-owned firms in its SBIR program, and identify strategies to improve their success rates.
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This should include descriptive statistics for applica tions, awards, and outcomes along the dimensions identified in this report, including knowledge creation, technology innovation, and impact on agency mission, as well as commercialization. • Conduct regular internal and external assessments.28 o As part of this assessment process, DoE should produce regular reports from the commercialization database.
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