Useful Stats: SBIR Awards, Proposals by State for FY 2004

The Small Business Administration (SBA) is anticipated to release its latest summary statistics for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards soon. Unfortunately, the data typically do not include proposal figures, a useful measure of the general effectiveness or need for SBIR technical assistance and outreach in any given state. For several years, the Useful Stats column of the SSTI Weekly Digest has attempted to rectify this omission and FY 2004 is no exception.

For FY04, SSTI has aggregated Phase I award, proposal and award-to-proposal conversion percentages for all 50 states and the District of Columbia for 10 of the 11 participating agencies. (The Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration refused to provide proposal statistics.) The table is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/042505t.htm

SSTI also has compiled similar tables for 2001 and 2002. An announcement of the 2003 table's availability will be made in an upcoming issue of the Digest. Links to the Phase I tables for other years are provided below:

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 anyone involved in the SBIR program knows, obtaining these types of statistics from some of the federal agencies can tax anyone's patience. It is fortunate for state and local SBIR outreach programs across the country that Chris Busch, formerly a consultant to the SBIR program of the Idaho EPSCoR office, was able to obtain much of the FY 2004 data for the Idaho SBIR Competition News (archived issues no longer available online). Other information SSTI obtained directly from the federal agencies.