1) DoD Accepting Proposals for 2007.1 SBIR Solicitation

The Department of Defense (DoD) began accepting proposals for their 2007.1 SBIR solicitation on December 6, 2006. Proposals are due January 10, 2007. The Solicitation was issued for public release on November 6, 2006, and is available at the DoD SBIR/STTR website at http://www.acq.osd.mil/sadbu/sbir/, or the DoD SBIR/STTR Resource Center at http://www.dodsbir.net/.

If you have technical questions about a topic you are interested in, you may submit written questions through the SBIR Interactive Topic Information System (SITIS), in which the questioner and respondent remain anonymous and all questions and answers are posted electronically for general viewing. Direct contact between proposers and the topic authors is no longer allowed. Written questions to SITIS must be submitted via the Internet at www.dodsbir.net/sitis. The SITIS service for this solicitation closes to new questions on December 27, 2006. All questions and answers will be posted from November 6, 2006 through January 10, 2006.

If you have general questions regarding the solicitation or the DoD SBIR/STTR program, contact the Help Desk at http://www.dodsbir.net/helpdesk/ or 866-SBIRHLP (866-724-7457).

2) DoD 2007.1 SBIR Solicitation Modifications

Several modifications have been made to the DoD 2007.1 SBIR solicitation since it was released on November 6, 2006. Changes to the Company Commercialization Report that were posted on December 6, 2006 appear below for your convenience. For a complete list of modifications and links to topics that have changed, visit http://www.dodsbir.net/solicitation/sbir071/modlist.htm.

Important New Information About The DoD SBIR Program

You will notice a couple of changes in the Company Commercialization Report.

a) As a new feature, recently awarded DoD Phase II projects will automatically be added to your Company Commercialization Report and highlighted in yellow. You need only enter sales, investment and additional commercialization information for these projects. However, you are still responsible for adding a new project for each non-DoD Phase II award received by your firm.

b) Cost saving information will now be documented. If the technology developed under the Phase II project achieved a cost savings or cost avoidance, you must indicate the amount of the savings, the agency or end user and system realizing the savings, and how the savings was calculated.

c) A new field has been added to collect sales from products or services embodying the Phase II technology that accrued to others outside your firm. If your firm sold or licensed the technological know-how developed under phase II to another entity, you must enter the cash revenue accruing to the other entity from its sale of new products or non-R&D services embodying the phase II technology in the new “3rd Party Sales” field and only report revenues your firm received with your firm’s sales figures.

d) DoD routinely analyzes its databases for potential errors, duplications, and other inaccuracies. If your firm was notified by the DoD over the past two months regarding an inconsistency and you have not responded, your firm will be unable to prepare and submit a proposal until you contact the DoD SBIR/STTR Program Support Team at 1-866-724-7457.

3) DoD Army Phase II PLUS Program Suspension Announcement

The Army recently posted the following announcement on their SBIR Website (https://www.armysbir.com/sbir/sbir.htm): "Due to lack of FY07 funding and the imminent start of the Army's Commercialization Pilot Program (CPP), the Phase II PLUS program has been suspended indefinitely and new applications will not be considered." For more information on the Army Phase II PLUS Program, visit https://www.armysbir.com/sbir/sbir_phaseii.htm.

4) NIH SBIR/STTR Program Announcement

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently added a Program Announcement (PA) that may be of interest to SBIR participants on the 'Special Announcements for Small Business Research Opportunities' page on their SBIR web site (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/sbir.htm). This page lists NIH SBIR/STTR-Relevant PAs, Requests for Applications (RFAs), and Notices that are taken from the NIH Guide Electronic Repository of Special Announcements for Small Business Research Opportunities (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/index.html).

The title, announcement number, participating Institute(s), web address, and receipt date(s) of the PA appears below:

Innovations in Biomedical Computational Science and Technology Initiative (SBIR/STTR) (PAR-07-160 and PAR-07-161 posted 12/15/06) Multiple agencies http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-07-160.html and http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-07-161.html

Application Receipt Date(s): February 9, 2007; May 24, 2007; September 24, 2007; January 24, 2008; May 24, 2008; September 24, 2008; January 24, 2009

5) SBIR Proposal Writing Tip: Commercialization

The following proposal writing tip was provided by Gail & Jim Greenwood. Past SBIR proposal writing articles written by the Greenwoods are available on the Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc. (GCGI) web site at http://g-jgreenwood.home.att.net.

SBIR Proposal Writing Basics: Commercialization Means Selling to the Government (Sometimes)

Back in 2002, we wrote a couple of these proposal writing tips about the critically important subject of commercialization of the SBIR/STTR technology (You can still read those tips on our website, www.g-jgreenwood.com). We want to follow up on those earlier tips with yet another article on this important part of the SBIR/STTR proposal.

Bluntly put, SBIR/STTR is for projects that have commercial potential, and for small businesses that are both committed to and capable of commercializing technology. In the old days, SBIR/STTR companies foolishly only did Phase I and Phase II projects, researching and developing the innovation, and then dropping the project at the end of Phase II. Why is this foolish? Because you often will lose money on Phase I, and you hope to break even on Phase II, so where does that leave you financially if you don’t go on to commercialize in Phase III? Let us do the math for you: a loss + a break even = a loss. Therefore, if you ever want to make money (remember, only “for profit” small businesses can compete for SBIR/STTR), you better be focused on commercializing your project in Phase III. Of course, not every SBIR/STTR project can be a Phase III commercialization success, but that’s a topic for another article sometime.

Some agencies, like National Science Foundation or National Institutes of Health, will expect 99.99% of the SBIR/STTR projects they fund to be commercialized by selling goods and services to non-agency (i.e., non-NIH or non-NSF) customers. In contrast, agencies like the Department of Defense (DOD) and NASA only support SBIR/STTR projects when there is a 99.99% chance that they, themselves, will want to be one and often the primary customer for your Phase III commercialization. Bluntly put, DOD and NASA don’t support SBIR/STTR projects unless they can see themselves as customers for the results of those projects in Phase III.

So there’s an important lesson here: when discussing commercialization of your project in your Phase I or Phase II proposal. NSF and NIH will expect you to thoroughly and convincingly argue how you will sell the results of your projects to consumers, industry, state and local governments, and other non-NSF/non-NIH customers. In contrast, this same section of a DOD or NASA proposal has to talk about how the results of your project, in Phase III, would solve a pressing problem or need of that agency, and how you would “insert” your service or product into a specific vehicle, system, mission, etc. of the agency.

Two important pieces of advice, then, on your commercialization discussion in proposals to agencies like DOD and NASA.

First, the commercialization section of your Phase I or II proposal should focus primarily on deploying your Phase III to meet that agency’s needs. We know from experience that many of you will spend 95% of this section on non-DOD, non-NASA commercialization discussion, whereas you should put 80% into talking about the DOD or NASA use, and only 20% on non-agency applications.

Second, recognize that DOD and NASA often do not want you to sell your Phase III outcome directly to them, but instead will expect you to work with their existing prime and sub contractors to ensure that your Phase III product/service is part of what the prime delivers to the agency in terms of a new airplane, refurbished Humvee, computer system upgrade, etc. DOD and NASA want to buy solutions to their problems, not a bushel basket of widgets that their personnel are expected to super glue onto a jet while it’s sitting on the aircraft carrier. You also need to make sure that what you are developing will fit into the overall system or product that the prime is designing and producing.

Therefore, you often must focus on the commercialization “middleman” who will be between you and DOD or NASA, with whom you must work to insert your innovation into what they are delivering to the agency. You need to know who this is, then establish a relationship with them -- and that should be done as soon as possible. It is not too early, in most cases, to be forming that relationship even before you submit the Phase I proposal. So if you are in the middle of your Phase I, or worse yet in the middle of your Phase II project with DOD or NASA and haven’t figured out who the “middleman” is in your case (much less started to build a relationship), then guess what you need to be doing IMMEDIATELY. Ask your Technical Point of Contact (TPOC) for names and maybe even an introduction.

Gail and Jim Greenwood may be reached at the following address:

Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.

1150 Junonia

Sanibel, FL 33957

(239) 395-9446 (voice & fax)

g-jgreenwood@att.net (email)