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The federal government has reauthorized the Small Business Administration's Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs after a five-month lapse, once again opening up billions of dollars to qualified businesses, reports Andy Medici of The Playbook.
The goal of the programs is to encourage federal funding for innovation and to turn ideas into products or services that benefit the public as well as the federal agencies that fund them.
Small businesses with fewer than 500 employees are eligible to draw from the programs, albeit with certain restrictions, and grants are awarded in one of three phases depending on how advanced the technology is.
The new authorization additionally creates a “strategic breakthrough allocation” program for any agency with an SBIR set-aside of $100 million or more, allowing agencies to award up to $30 million to a single small business over a maximum of 48 months. The funding must come with matching private funding, and the business must demonstrate a market-validated technology.
Since 1982, the SBIR and STTR programs, known jointly across the federal government and the SBA as America’s Seed Fund, have invested more than $81 billion into more than 34,000 small businesses, according to the SBA.
FULL STORY: SBA's billion-dollar 'seed fund' programs are back
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