Appendix F:
Small Business Participation
in
the Advanced Technology Program
Can small business compete effectively
for funding under the Commerce Department's Advanced Technology Program?
Although the ATP makes no special allowance for small business, the results
of the first six years of the program show that small and mid-sized firms
in fact are very successful in the rigorous, hard-fought ATP competitions.
Since 1990, the ATP
has made a total of 280 cost-sharing awards to individual companies
or industry-led joint ventures to develop high-risk, enabling technologies
that would stimulate the U.S. economy by making possible important
new products, services, or industrial processes for the world's
markets. Nearly half (46 percent) of these have gone to individual
small businesses or to joint ventures led by a small business.
Other small businesses also are involved in significant numbers
in joint R&D ventures supported by the ATP, forming
strategic partnerships with larger firms.
The small businesses that
win ATP awards do so entirely on merit: no extra points are given for
being a small business. Innovative technical ideas that have substantial
potential impact on the economy are the key-and small companies have long
been recognized as fertile ground for innovation.
ATP award winners have included
quite a few tiny start-up companies, small firms for whom the ATP can
mean the difference between success and failure. ATP projects at small
companies already have led to a radical new design for the next generation
of high-current ion beam implanters (a key tool of the semiconductor industry);
a revolutionary new organic compound detection technique that provides
a thousand-fold increase in sensitivity for the pharmaceutical and clinical
chemistry industries; key measurement technologies for the U.S. auto industry
to improve the quality and lower the cost of new cars; a unique new technology
for improving and managing the performance of fiber-optic data networks;
a wholly new technology for inactivating dangerous viruses in human blood
supply products; and many others.
Out of 280 ATP awards:
| Single applicants: |
178 |
|
Small business: |
100 |
| Joint ventures: |
102 |
|
Led by small business: |
28 |
| Total: |
280 |
|
Total: |
128 |
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Date created: April 16, 1996
Last updated:
May 19, 2005
|
