COMMENTARY
BREAKTHROUGH BUSINESS
The AAL’s four tenets for businesses wanting to work in the Army's ‘four- let ter word’ program—SBIR.
by Dr. Casey Perley, Scott Stanford, Stephanie Hill and Joshua Israel
F
or years, Congress and the defense establishment have sought a better return on investment (ROI) from the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, both for the DOD and for companies on SBIR contracts. Te Army SBIR program is designed to provide small, high-tech businesses the opportu-
nity to propose innovative research and development solutions to critical Army needs. Te return to great power competition has increased the stakes beyond ROI.
In recent testimony, Barbara McQuiston, then the official performing the duties of the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said of SBIR, “We have to be able to work at the speed of commercial flexibility because we don’t want to just be able to understand what their technology is, we need to be able to capitalize on it and field these systems for the warfighter” (emphasis added). McQuiston, who launched a DOD inno- vation steering group in April, added that “we have to move at speeds that are within a commercial timeframe.”
Congress and senior Pentagon officials, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Kathleen Hicks, who directed the formation of the steering group, are eager for SBIR to result in fielded capabilities. Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., has even proposed legisla- tion requiring service secretaries to identify promising SBIR technologies for inclusion in future budgets. For SBIR to be successful, though, changes must be made at the base of the pyramid, far below service secretaries, about what technologies enter the program and how they will contribute to DOD priorities.
Te Army SBIR program distributes more than $300 million a year in contracts to U.S.- based small businesses; the other services across DOD distribute hundreds of millions more. Yet despite this, the biggest DOD SBIR success story in its 40-year existence is perhaps putting the Roomba under the cat in your living room—a viable technology,
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