Progress on a Fast Track
Civilians should benefit from more military innovations in the future thanks to DOD's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. SBIR invests $550 million annually in developing dual military/commercial technologies and recently created a special DOD Fast Track for the most promising technologies. That means a higher priority for receiving funding and faster funding action.
How does DOD select projects for the DOD Fast Track? DOD considers many factors, but special priority goes to proposals that attract a matching cash investment from an outside investor.
Robert Neal, DOD's
Small Business Director, explains this rationale. "That
kind of matching investment is a very strong endorsement of a small company's
ability to bring a new product to market, military or civilian. Basically,
this is our way of smoking out those proposals most likely to have a big
impact on the strength of our armed forces and the U.S. Economy."
The results of a recent National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study supports DOD's Fast Track approach, which was one of several SBIR program improvements that won Vice President Gore's Reinvention Hammer Award in May 1999. The NAS study's initial results, publicly released last spring, show that DOD Fast Track projects are significantly outperforming comparable non-Fast Track projects in all major indicators of commercialization and success.
For more information about SBIR, contact Kala Quintana, SBIR Program Support Analyst, at telephone (703) 645-7646 or email. Or visit the DOD SBIR Internet site.
3/15/00
