Measuring ATP Impact
2004 Report on Economic Progress

Continuous Monitoring and Improvement

ATP Project Management

The management process for projects funded by ATP is designed to assure that the R & D effort remains faithful to the original proposal (which satisfied the program’s strict selection criteria), and to the cooperative agreement governing the award. Figure 8 defines the roles and responsibilities of the ATP project management team. Project management monitors the technological and business progress made in the projects through each project milestone. These include:

These milestones are used by the program in a number of ways. They help ATP to encapsulate the scope and merit of the project versus its original goals. They also help to define critical project decision points, and clarify alternative pathways that can optimize success.

Within the project oversight process, and because of the nature of innovative, highrisk research, ATP expects changes to occur.  In fact, the program is accepting of changes that will strengthen the project and enhance the prospects for success — as long as those changes work in the context of the selection criteria, terms and conditions of the award, budget, commercialization plan, and other important factors.

Business Reporting

Since 1994 EAO has used its Business Reporting System (BRS) to gather data from companies, universities, and laboratories participating in ATP-funded projects. In 1999 EAO switched to the web and began collecting survey data via secure Internet connection. Figure 9 summarizes the system’s five surveys that track ATP projects over time. The BRS helps to create an ever-more-concise picture of the company, the project, and the impacts of the technology under development.

The five BRS surveys are:

1. A baseline report completed before the project begins to identify a company and establish the goals of the project.
2. Quarterly reports to provide an update of developments in the project.
3. Anniversary reports to detail the status of the project in terms of collaboration, new applications of the technology, publications and presentations, and company financial data.
4. Closeout reports to identify remaining barriers to commercialization, set fiveyear business goals for the technology, and identify expected spillovers.
5. Post-project reports at two, four, and six years following the completion of the project to document actual progress in commercializing the technology and impacts of the innovation to the company and society.

Over time, BRS survey results form the basis for a database of companies, proposed technologies, business impacts, and spillover benefits for industries and the nation.

ATP Competitions

ATP concentrates on those technologies that offer significant, broad-based benefits to the nation's economy — technologies that likely would not be developed without program support because they are judged too risky. Often they are path-breaking approaches. The subjects of ATP research projects are proposed by industry, and competitions are open to proposals from any area of technology.

Of all the proposals received by ATP, about 12 percent result in awards because each potential research project must meet a list of strict criteria to qualify for funding. Each innovative technology must have the potential for broad benefits to the nation in jobs, economic growth, and better quality of life. Specifically, the program looks for proposals with strong technological and economic merits. As explained in the ATP Proposal Preparation Kit:

• The proposal must convince expert reviewers that the project involves a high level of technical merit .
• Successful proposals must effectively balance high technical risk with evidence of scientific and/or engineering feasibility for overcoming that risk.
• The technical plan must explain how the technical objectives will be reached, addressing all the anticipated problems and describing how these problems will be handled.
• Submitters must explain the business opportunity and identify future users of the technology, as well as describe its national economic significance , additional societal benefits, and how it improves upon existing technology.
• In establishing the need for ATP funding , efforts made to obtain funding from other sources must be described, along with the results of those efforts.

To characterize the pathway to economic benefits , the experience and structure of the firm must be documented, as well as what products will result from the technology, how those products will be commercialized, and how the technology will be broadly diffused. ⁹

Proposals are evaluated in peer-reviewed competitions against the above criteria. Reviewers are experts in such fields as biotechnology, photonics, chemistry, manufacturing, information technology, or materials, and sit on one of several technology-specific boards. All reviewers are screened by ATP for conflicts of interest and sign nondisclosure agreements.

Each proposal receives appropriate, technically competent reviews even if it involves a broad, multi-disciplinary mix of technologies. When proposals are deemed to meet all criteria, ATP uses cooperative agreements to enter into cost-sharing arrangements with recipients rather than awarding an outright grant. Awarded funds can only be applied to research costs approved by the board.

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9.  Excerpted from the ATP Proposal Preparation Kit, February 2004.

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Date created:  March 15, 2005
Last updated: August 15, 2005

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