NIST GCR
02-281
"The Art of Telling Your Story"
Tips & Insights
for Putting Your Best Foot Forward with Investors and Corporate Partners
About the Advanced
Technology Program
The Advanced Technology
Program (ATP) is a partnership between government and private industry
to conduct high-risk research to develop enabling technologies
that promise significant commercial payoffs and widespread benefits
for the economy. The ATP provides a mechanism for industry to extend
its technological reach and push the envelope beyond what it otherwise
would attempt.
Promising future
technologies are the domain of ATP:
- Enabling technologies
that are essential to the development of future new and substantially
improved projects, processes, and services across diverse application
areas;
- Technologies
for which there are challenging technical issues standing in
the way of success;
- Technologies
whose development often involves complex “systems” problems
requiring a collaborative effort by multiple organizations;
- Technologies
that will go undeveloped and/or proceed too slowly to be competitive
in global markets without ATP.
The ATP funds technical
research, but it does not fund product development–that is
the domain of the company partners. The ATP is industry driven,
and that keeps it grounded in real-world needs. For-profit companies
conceive, propose, co-fund, and execute all of the projects cost-shared
by ATP.
Smaller firms working
on single-company projects pay a minimum of all the indirect costs
associated with the project. Large, “Fortune 500” companies
participating as a single company pay at least 60 percent of total
project costs. Joint ventures pay at least half of total project
costs. Single-company projects can last up to three years; joint
ventures can last as long as five years. Companies of all sizes
participate in ATP-funded projects. To date, more than half of
ATP awards have gone to individual small businesses or to joint
ventures led by a small business.
Each project has
specific goals, funding allocations, and completion dates established
at the outset. Projects are monitored and can be terminated for
cause before completion. All projects are selected in rigorous,
competitions, which use peer review to identify those that score
highest against technical and economic criteria.
Contact ATP for more
information:
- On the Internet: http://www.atp.nist.gov
- By e-mail: atp@nist.gov
- By phone: 1-800-ATP-FUND
(1-800-287-3863)
- By writing:
Advanced Technology Program
National Institute of Standards and Technology
100 Bureau Drive, Mail Stop 4701
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-4701
About
the Author
Rick King has 22
years of experience in new ventures and coaching entrepreneurs,
and is an international speaker and workshop leader. He has worked
with over 100 technology start-ups and negotiated over 50 licensing,
partnering, fundraising, and mergers and acquisitions deals in
software, Internet applications, electronics, chemical processing,
hand held devices, optical storage, factory automation, advanced
materials, computer simulation, medical devices, food products,
and biotechnology. In addition, he founded and sold a technology-based
business of his own. Rick has held management positions in product
development, marketing, and business development at Hewlett Packard,
Proctor & Gamble, and with small high-tech companies. While
working with the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program,
Rick authored a guidebook entitled, “Making Money with Your
Technology,” and developed “Innovation Insights,” an
online management tool for managing innovation. Rick has an MBA
from Harvard Business School and a B.S. degree in chemical engineering
from the University of Massachusetts.
Return
to Table of Contents
Date
created: May 24, 2002
Last updated:
August 2, 2005
|
