Appendix G
Annex 2 to Chapter 5: Department of Defense Data on NASA SBIR Awards
The Department of Defense (DoD) maintains a database of company outcomes, the Company Commercialization Record (CCR). In principle, awardees are required to report on their previous awards on a regular basis. In practice, many companies file reports only when they are preparing a new application for DoD, because updating the CCR is an application requirement.
There is some overlap between NASA and DoD because some DoD awardees who report to DoD on previous awards are reporting on SBIR awards received from NASA. Thus, some NASA outcomes are reported in the CCR. A total of 117 records were identified for FY2001-2011 (see Figure G-1). These awards comprise a small portion of all NASA awards and may be uncharacteristic of the larger population. It is possible, for example, that companies with connections to at least two agencies are more commercially oriented or better established. Nonetheless, these data may provide some cross check against the 2011 Survey data, and this appendix therefore provides supplemental information to Chapter 5 (Quantitative Outcomes) of this report.
Figure G-2 shows the distribution of total sales by amount. Twenty-two percent of respondents reported zero sales to date, while at the other end of the scale, 16 percent reported sales of at least $1 million, with 2 percent of respondents reporting sales of more than $5 million. The percentage reporting some sales (78 percent) is much higher than the percentage calculated from the 2011 Survey data.
Additional investment in research and development is also regarded as evidence of increased commercialization. Only 12 of the 117 projects did not generate either additional investment or sales, although there are likely to be biases in the subsample of projects found in the CCR. Figure G-3 illustrates the distribution of additional investment, by amount, provided by non-DoD federal agencies, which in this case is very likely to be NASA. Sixty-two
percent of respondents reported no additional investment funding, while more than one-third reported some additional investment. Two percent of respondents reported additional investment of more than $5 million, and 3 percent of respondents reported additional investment of $1,000,001 to $5,000,000.