An assessment of the US Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program: A study of project failure

On the Failure of Scientific Research: An Analysis of SBIR Projects Funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health

Albert Link, Christopher A Swann and Martijn van Hasselt

Science and Public Policy, 2022, vol. 49, issue 6, 972-978

Abstract: In 2000 and 2012, the US Congress charged the National Research Council (NRC) to study how the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program had stimulated technological innovation and used small businesses to meet Federal research and development needs and to recommend program improvements. Using project data collected by the NRC, we suggest that an important assessment metric not previously considered by the NRC in its reports to Congress relates to the failure rate of funded Phase II research projects. We identify a number of covariates associated with project failure, and we recommend that program managers might decrease the likelihood of project failure if funded firms can be given relevant information about how to contact angel investors, venture capitalists, private investors, and the like, and how to present a proposal for additional research investment dollars. Our findings should have a direct benefit to other countries that have implemented SBIR-like programs.

Keywords: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR); project failure; R&D; program assessment; program management; technology diffusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/scipol/scac049 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: An Assessment of the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program: A Study of Project Failure (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:scippl:v:49:y:2022:i:6:p:972-978.

Access Statistics for this article

Science and Public Policy is currently edited by Nicoletta Corrocher, Jeong-Dong Lee, Mireille Matt and Nicholas Vonortas

More articles in Science and Public Policy from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().