A DIFFERENT KIND OF COMPETITION


HOW IT WORKS


The Tangi-Tek LLC team demonstrates its technology—carbon fiber composite materials that can improve antenna performance and reduce electromagnetic interference—to xTechSearch judges. From left are Tangi-Tek’s Adithya S. Ramachandran, co-founder and product development engineer; Kent G.R. Thompson, co-founder and principal engineer; and Dr. Robert L. Doneker, co- founder and president; and xTechSearch judges John Kincaid, U.S. Army Futures Command – Futures and Concepts Center; Dr. Augustus Fountain III, CCDC – Chemical Biological Center; Dr. Bryan Glaz, CCDC – ARL; and Maj. Katrina Patton, U.S. Army Futures Command – Futures and Concepts Center.


receive $250,000, and the 12 semifinalists for xTechSearch 3.0, who will each receive $120,000.


Over the last year, xTechSearch has evalu- ated more than 500 potential technologies and awarded $4.1 million in total prizes to 102 small businesses. Te competition has proven to be a viable mechanism to rapidly screen and assess technologies; a traditional request-for-proposal process may take six to nine months to evaluate just a handful of contractors.


Te modest prizes awarded to competi- tors in the first two phases are not only incentives to spur innovation, but they also function as working capital to help the companies—who are usually not particularly well-funded—take part in subsequent phases. Te decision to make the search into a prize competition was meant to help lower the bar to partic- ipation and take contracting out of the picture. Te Phase III awards are meant to provide funding to help the participants


10 Army AL&T Magazine Fall 2019


continue developing their technology and offset travel costs for the proof-of-concept demonstrations. Te grand prize is meant to help them further continue the devel- opment of their technology.


While the prizes are small by DOD stan- dards,


for many contestants they are


much-needed injections of funding. But when the competition is over, a frequent concern is, “What next?” Without a deal for their technology, what do competitors do to continue development? Te answer just may be a program enacted in the 1980s to encourage domestic small busi- nesses to engage in federal research and development: the Small Business Innova- tion Research (SBIR) program.


MUCH MORE THAN MONEY xTechSearch was designed to institution- alize an innovation ecosystem that fosters continued engagement between the Army and small businesses. As part of the xTech- Search program, the competitors receive mentoring on the Army’s research and


development (R&D) process, its labo- ratories and technology-transfer and partnership opportunities.


For instance, xTechSearch invites repre- sentatives from the Army’s Office of Small Business Programs and technology trans- fer experts from the Army’s labs to provide briefings on the various ways industry can partner with the Army, such as through cooperative R&D agreements, commer- cial test agreements (in which Army labs test private-sector technologies) and the SBIR program.


Participating companies also benefit from public exposure and business develop- ment opportunities at the AUSA meeting in October in Washington, which hosts more than 700 exhibitors and 31,000 attendees, and the AUSA Global Force Symposium and Exposition in Huntsville, Alabama, in the spring, which hosts more than 200 exhibitors and 6,800 attendees. At these events, AUSA provides free admis- sion for the xTechSearch competitors and


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