The Small Business Administration (SBA) released a request for information (RFI) on revisions to two key areas of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) policy directives: SBIR/STTR Phase III policy; and, SBIR/STTR data rights.

The Small Business Administration released its annual solicitation for the Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership Program, a competitive grants program for eligible organizations to conduct outreach and provide technical assistance services to technology-based small business owners.

As part of the Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership Program, the U.S. Small Business Administration has awarded up to $200,000 to organizations in 21 states to provide outreach and technical assistance to science and technology-driven small businesses. With an emphasis on socially and economically disadvantaged firms, the FAST program provides funds to organizations helping businesses better prepare to compete for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) funding.

The Small Business Administration announced the FY15 awardees of its Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership Program. In FY15, 20 state and local economic development agencies, business development centers, and colleges and universities will receive $100,000 each to support programs to establish and/or sustain programs that provide support to innovative, technology-driven small businesses in their state and help them compete in federally funded research and development through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs.

The SBIR program has been a legislated requirement of the Department of Defense, an agency responsible for roughly 40 percent of all federal extramural R&D spending, for more than three decades. One might expect that over that amount of time, the Department of Defense would have developed a system to become compliant with SBIR’s fundamental provision that a minimum threshold of innovation research spending be directed toward small businesses. Yet, a new report from the Government Accountability Office concludes DOD couldn’t say if it was meeting the threshold because, DoD did not submit the required obligations data. The report states “DOD officials told [the GAO] that obtaining obligations data would require requesting information from more than 10 individual program offices that, in turn, would have to request the information from various DOD comptrollers, which would be a major effort.”

The U.S. Small Business Administration has announced dates for this year’s SBIR Road Tour, a national outreach effort to highlight funding opportunities through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. Combined, these two programs invest more than $2.5 billion annually as a way to spur innovation. At each of the road tour’s 16 stops, innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers, and small technology firms will have the opportunity to meet directly with SBIR and STTR program managers at the state and federal levels to discuss the program. The tour begins in May 2017 and will continue through October.

The U.S. Small Business Administration announced 24 grants to organizations working to increase SBIR/STTR awards and commercialization outcomes in their states. The Federal and State Technology Partnership program (FAST) emphasizes initiatives focusing on underrepresented regions and entrepreneurs.

Congratulations to the SSTI members receiving FAST awards in the 2019 cycle:

The U.S. Small Business Administration has granted 16 organizations up to $125,000 each and five organizations up to $200,000 in FY 2017 as part of the Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership Program.

Federal agencies fail, on average, 24 percent of the time to notify applicant small businesses of award decisions within required deadlines. A small business has a zero percent chance of being able to plan to start an innovation project within six months if they apply to ARPA-E (the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency) or the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, both of which never met the deadline. 

The Small Business Administration (SBA) recently rolled out a new website for the SBIR/STTR program which SBA administers. Reorganized and including new landing pages for entrepreneurs, support organizations, and federal agencies, the new page provides quicker and easier access to the right information.

As covered in the last Weekly Digest, the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship held a hearing on reauthorizing SBA’s innovation programs. SSTI was invited to add to the hearing’s record, and our letter supporting SBIR/STTR pilot programs, FAST and entrepreneurial development programs is produced, below.

Dear Chairman Rubio and Ranking Member Cardin:

The Senate Small Business Committee held a hearing yesterday on “Reauthorization of the SBA’s Innovation Programs,” which had a heavy emphasis on SBIR/STTR.

Are you looking to increase the success rate of your state’s SBIR/STTR proposals? If so, a reminder that applications for the Small Business Administration’s Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership Program are due next Friday, June 28, at 4 p.m. EDT. This program provides one-year funding to organizations executing programs related to SBIR/STTR outreach, technical assistance, or financial support.

The Federal and State Technology Partnership (FAST) is intended to increase innovation-based small business awareness and participation in the SBIR and STTR programs in places and populations that are underrepresented in the programs’ award portfolios.  Through FAST, the Small Business Administration (SBA) makes small, matching one-year awards to state programs on a competitive basis.

The U.S. Small Business Administration is hosting its first innovation ecosystem summit, a free virtual event that is open to all. The summit is expected to connect entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) that work with startups and small businesses — particularly those serving underrepresented communities — that are trying to build out and commercialize their technologies. The three-day summit takes place next week, Nov. 15-17.

To mark the anniversary of its executive order on supply chains, the White House released a fact sheet this morning outlining past and future actions to strengthen American competitiveness. The release includes several initiatives that have not been discussed widely before, including that: the Export-Import Bank of the U.S.