Small businesses are always on the lookout for opportunity and the Federal Government is a great provider of opportunities for the small guys. However, small businesses typically do not have the resources or expertise on hand to navigate their way through finding, comprehending, and then winning government contracts. Or so they think. Yes, it can be a test of your will (and wits) to find certain types of federal work when you are a small business spending your valuable time and hard earned money on keeping and growing your business. There is one program out there for the savvy and innovative small business (in a variety of industries); the Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR).

The SBIR Program is administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration and twelve federal agencies participate in spending over $2 billion in funding. This Program provides small, high-tech companies a great shot at contributing to the nation’s research and development, and eventually commercial growth, efforts. Think of the SBIR Program as being one large river of funding with all the agencies being streams of funding off this river. Some are very large creeks, such as the Department of Defense, and some are smaller brooks, such as NOAA.

Each agency may follow slightly different solicitation methods and cycles, and may use slightly different formats and submission methods. However all have the goal of bringing a small business’s innovative idea to commercial fruition via a three phased approach. Phase I: This phase allows a business to provide proof of concept or prove the feasibility of their idea. Awards usually hover around $100,000. Phase II: This phase takes that feasible idea into a demonstrative prototype and awards can be upwards of $1 million. Phase III: This is an “unofficial” phase as it does not include SBIR Program funding, however it can include internal funding and perhaps outside source investment to bring the prototype into commercialization.

The key for a small business is finding that great opportunity on which to propose and then winning a Phase I. Getting to Phase II and III should be considered from the onset, but if a company has not yet jumped into the SBIR pool, getting that first Phase I sometimes is the biggest hurdle. It can be done however, and with minimal time and expense. We'll discuss how to land an SBIR contract in Part II.