Be sure to include an abstract of your project, outlining your technical strategy and key innovations, in box 13 of the cover page.

1. Briefly describe the business opportunity that your project will address. Include likely products, target market, potential customers, size of market opportunity, avenues for broad diffusion of benefits, and rationale for your choices.

2. Why is this project strategically important to your organization? What evidence can you provide of your organization's commitment? How will the success or failure of this project impact your organization?

3. Why do you believe that your effort is within the scope of this competition (see the Technical Goals and Business Goals sections of the CBS focus program paper)? Identify how your project addresses the goals of this program.

4. From what technical baseline will your project begin (including work you have already done)? Given that base-line, what additional technical challenges need to be addressed to achieve your technical objectives? Clearly identify the technical risk involved in your project. What would ATP funding enable you to do that wouldn't be achieved otherwise, by you or by anyone else?

5. What organizations or individuals (other than yourselves) are doing the most advanced work in your proposed area of research? By comparison, why are you likely to succeed?

6. How will you bring your technology to market; that is, how will you leverage success in your technical effort into a sustainable competitive advantage?

7. Identify liaisons or partnerships that will be key to the technical or business success of your project, what role you expect each organization to play, and what evidence you have that they will participate. Identify the role each joint venture partner and/or subcontractor will play in both the research and subsequent commercialization. Please be as specific as possible.

8. How will success in your technical effort lead to broad-based economic benefits to the United States? In other words, how will the benefits from your project extend past your own organization? What fundamental difference in the US economy will be enabled by the successful completion of your project?

9. Briefly describe the source of your cost sharing and how you plan to fund the follow-through commercialization efforts, which are outside the scope of this ATP project. Please give estimates for each of the following in box 11 on the cover page:

   a. ATP funds requested per year and total (includes only pre-commercialization effort),

   b. Your cost share (includes only pre-commercialization effort; minimum of indirect costs for single applicants, matching funds for joint ventures).

   
   Please provide dollar or other estimates for the following (no explanation required for pre-proposal):

   
   c. Additional (non-ATP) funds required for commercialization,

   d. Anticipated direct benefit to economy within first 5 years of product or service availability,

   e. Anticipated indirect benefit to economy in same time frame.

10. Would the work proposed in your project be pursued, by yourself or others, in the absence of an ATP grant? In that circumstance, how would the scope and objectives differ?

Each answer in the pre-proposal will be scored on a scale of A through F, as explained below. No overall rating or recommendation will be provided. There may be cases where the response doesn't fall neatly within the categories below; notes elaborating on individual scores may be provided. Successful full proposals must provide evidence of both technical and business merit relative to each of the ATP project selection criteria. Full proposals must stand on their own; their evaluation is not affected by the information provided in the pre-proposal nor ATP's response. Full proposals are not required to reflect the answers given in the pre-proposal.

A. With appropriate elaboration in response to the published ATP project selection criteria, a full proposal reflecting your answer is likely to be competitive.

B. Appropriate elaboration might lead to a competitive full proposal; however, your answer suggests that it may be difficult to show a clear correlation with ATP project selection criteria.

C. Although you provide no specific evidence in conflict with the ATP criteria, there is insufficient information in your answer to convince us that elaboration could lead to a competitive full proposal.

D. Certain aspects of your answer appear to be in conflict with the ATP project selection criteria and, thus, would not likely lead to a full proposal that could be funded.

E. From your answer it appears that you did not understand the question. A competitive full proposal would require you to address these issues in a detailed, clear and unambiguous manner relative to the ATP project selection criteria.

F. Your answer appears to be in conflict with a formal ATP rule. Such proposals cannot be funded.

Specifically: _____________________________________________________

X. No answer was provided to this question.

Date created: February 1997
Last updated: April 12, 2005