A study of commercialization factors in a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funded company

Abstract

A nation's ability to innovate is paramount for its success and survival among other nations. But capitalizing on these innovations and bringing them to the marketplace are what gives a nation its competitive edge and provide sustainable growth over time in this highly dynamic global economy. In the United States' complex innovation ecosystem, small businesses and entrepreneurs play a crucial role in innovating new technologies and commercializing them. Indeed many of the nation's large, successful and innovative firms started out as small entrepreneurial firms. Microsoft, Intel, AMD, FedEx, Qualcomm, Adobe are examples to these firms. These small entrepreneurial firms with new ideas need to garner fair amount of funding before they can bring their ideas into the marketplace. However for entrepreneurial companies with science based innovative ideas, due to the unproven nature of these ideas and the lack of sufficient public information, there exist knowledge asymmetries. Therefore possibility of getting direct venture capital and/or angel investment becomes very slim for these firms unless the idea's commercial potential is obviously clear or a customer is already available. To address this early stage financing gap and to increase private sector commercialization of innovations, the Federal government offers funding through its three phase private-public partnership innovation program, called Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

(cont.) The purpose of this study is to investigate the existence of any correlations between commercialization of SBIR funded projects, specifically Phase II programs, and various characteristics of the involved entities in attempt to enhance commercialization performance of an SBIR funded company. We hope that the results of this study will be practical in defining commercialization strategies to achieve faster and stronger capitalization on R&D investment for both the awarded company and the federal government and hence the tax payers.