SBIR Program Diversity and Assessment Challenges Report of a Symposium (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Panel IV — SBIR at the Department of Energy
Panel IV — SBIR at the Department of Energy
Pages 108-122
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From page 108... ...
SC was charged with managing SBIR for the department. In addition to the Office of Science, five other DoE programs received services from the SBIR 108
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From page 109... ...
The SBIR office also handled all logistics, such as dealing with thousands of outside peer reviewers. · It was decentralized in that the programs were responsible for identifying technical topics, identifying peer reviewers, and selecting grant applica tions for funding.
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From page 110... ...
He concluded that many kinds of SBIR projects were making important contributions to DoE missions, and encouraged the study panel to contact program managers throughout the department to gather views on SBIR quality. Goal 2: Increasing Commercialization from Federal R&D Dr.
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From page 111... ...
He suggested that the biggest contribution the study committee could make would be an independent assessment of Phase III activity in all the agencies. At the same time, he said, it was likely that any attempt to obtain this information by asking companies for Phase III funding data related to individual SBIR projects would produce misleading results.
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From page 112... ...
Additional resources would allow DoE to alert many more small businesses of the advantages of participating in SBIR, especially in rural areas and states of relatively little commercial activity. · Phase III follow-up: The department's knowledge of Phase III success was limited.
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From page 113... ...
The job was a "hot seat," she said, because of the pressures on the program and the demand from applicant companies, and yet it was "very good schooling at the intersection of science and technology, public policy, ideology, and empirical evaluation." These various forces, she said, "conflict, enrich each other, and bump off each other, and at the end of the day I think there's a lot of progress made." Evaluation as a Management Tool She then said that evaluation has its limits. "I love it, but it can be misused, so a lot of care needs to be brought to the application of the evaluation." She said she felt optimistic about having this SBIR study done through the National Research Council, because it provided an excellent forum for organizing and implementing a "fair, balanced and constructive" evaluation.
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From page 114... ...
One way early research addressed knowledge spillovers was to count pat ents and patent citations. Three researchers at the National Institute of 19Maryann Feldman and Maryellen Kelley, "Winning an Award from the Advanced Technology Program: Pursuing R&D Strategies in the Public Interest and Benefiting from a Halo Effect," NISTIR 6577, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2001.
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From page 115... ...
21David Austin and Molly Macauley, "Estimating Future Consumer Benefits from ATP-funded Innovation: The Case of Digital Data Storage," NIST GCR 00-790, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2000.
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From page 116... ...
He again cited a point by Dr. Johnson that an overly narrow focus on individual SBIR projects might miss larger benefits or effects that develop indirectly or emerge as some related product or service.
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From page 117... ...
Feldman's plea for more data, and Dr. Johnson's suggestion that access to managers in the agencies would be invaluable, so that the study panel "can actually talk to the managers and learn from them what are their perceptions and how the SBIR program has been integrated into the creative goals of the agency's mission." The panel should also be aware, he said, of how the program can sometimes change the career trajectories of small-business scientists and engineers.
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From page 118... ...
The Role of the National Laboratories Jacques Gansler asked about the role of the national labs in the overall DoE program. Robert Berger said that the labs had no role in the SBIR program, except as potential contractors of the DoE.
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From page 119... ...
In addition, in Phase II, the DoE took literally the contents of Public Law 102-564, which instructed SBIR agencies to consider certain factors related to commercialization: 22 · The company's track record in commercializing previous SBIRs; · Whether the company was willing to share costs during Phase II, which indicated a strong company belief in its project; · Whether the company had commitments for funding at the conclusion of the SBIR grant. DoE considered all of these factors, and also asked whether there was a difference among the programs, since some programs might relax one criterion or another for various reasons.
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From page 120... ...
In all the listings of available national laboratory facilities, only about 20 of the DoE SBIR projects had any collaboration with a national laboratory. He said there was more collaboration with universities than with national laboratories.
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From page 121... ...
But occasionally, he said, especially in the context of the Commercialization Assistance Program, he worked directly with the small businesses themselves. When he did that, he said that "it sometimes brings tears to your eyes-the enthusiasm of the people, and the difference they tell you this program makes in terms of where their company started and what it has grown to; what their vision is and what is possible; and just how good these people are at science and how well they understand the contribution they want to make to the economy." He said that if he had to search for something he did not like about the program, it was having to rely on a small, overworked staff to produce the solicitations and evaluate the grants.
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From page 122... ...
Finally, the agency's peer review system was labor-intensive; DoE had to convey information packages to at least three reviewers for every proposal and retrieve then on time, or find substitute reviewers. Jim Turner concluded the discussion by noting that the initial SBIR legislation benefited from the combined perspectives of the House Science Committee, the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and other partners in Congress.
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