Useful Stats: SBIR Awards, Proposals by State for FY 2003

With SSTI's compilation of the FY 2003 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) proposal and award statistics by state, tech-based economic development programs - specifically SBIR assistance and outreach efforts - now have the requisite data to evaluate conversion trends for most agencies during the four-year period 2001-2004.

The use of trends over a number of years, rather than single year "snapshots," can be useful for refining a state or local program's efforts, particularly if the program has held conferences, outreach, proposal assistance targeting specific federal agency solicitations or technologies. Trend data also helps to reveal how Phase I awards made within a state are tracking with the overall proposal, award and conversion rates for each agency and comparable states.

For FY03, SSTI has aggregated Phase I award, proposal and award-to-proposal conversion percentages for all 50 states and the District of Columbia for nine of the 10 participating agencies -- Environmental Protection Agency proposal statistics were unavailable and the Department of Homeland Security was not a participant yet. The 2003 table is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/062705t.htm

SSTI also has compiled similar tables for 2001, 2002 and 2004:

FY 2004: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/042505t.htm

FY 2002: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/090503t.htm

FY 2001: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/051002t.htm

FY 2000 (no proposal figures): http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/030901t.htm

As with the FY04 SBIR stats released earlier this year, SSTI owes a debt of gratitude to Chris Busch, formerly a consultant to the SBIR program of the Idaho EPSCoR office. Dr. Busch obtained much of the FY03 data for the now-defunct Idaho SBIR Competition News that SSTI plugged into its SBIR table. Other information was gathered directly from the federal agencies.