AppId is over the quota
NOTE: This blog is by Pravina Raghavan, Director, Innovation and Technology at SBA.
Today, I was pleased to join Roland Tibbetts, the father of the SBIR program, our SBA Administrator Karen Mills and Senator Mary Landrieu, Chair of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, in recognizing eighteen small businesses and three individuals for the critical role they play in research and development and commend their success in driving innovation and creating new jobs. In addition, three past participants in SBIR who represent the very best of the 30-plus-year SBIR program were named to the third annual SBIR Hall of Fame class.
The Tibbetts Awards and Hall of Fame Awards are presented to companies and individuals from all over the United States who are beacons of promise and models of excellence in high technology.
The SBIR program has been an important resource for commercializing promising technologies and spurring innovation. A study by R&D Magazine showed that between 2002 and 2006, 25 percent of the top 100 innovation came from first that received SBIR funding.
As many of you may know, the SBIR program was reauthorized a little over a year ago. Since then, the SBA has been working very hard to make the program better for our most innovative firms. We have updated the eligibility, size rules and policy directives to make the program more effective and streamlined. We’re working with our federal partners on shortening timelines from solicitation to award so that firms can get money faster. We are improving data collection and instituting robust performance benchmarks around commercialization. We will continue to put in place a SBIR infrastructure that will help turn great ideas into successful, thriving businesses.
At SBA, we believe that the SBIR program is a cornerstone of our mission as well an important factor in the President’s high growth and jobs agenda. According to the Department of Commerce, innovation has been responsible for approximately two-thirds of our country’s economic growth since World War II.
If we are going to realize our full economic potential, we need more people across the country to start the types of businesses that make our economy more competitive and more innovative.
I encourage you to take a moment and read through some of our winner’s profiles at challenge.gov. They are great companies and are transforming their industries. Many have graduated from the SBIR program but continue to show strong economic growth, business investment, broader social and economic impact and technical innovation.
This is what the SBIR program is all about and why we’ve come together to celebrate at the Tibbetts and Hall of Fame Awards.
Companies
Accuray, Inc. -- Sunnyvale, CA; Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation – Cambridge, MA; Beacon Interactive Systems, LLC – Cambridge, MA; CPSI Biotech – Owego, NY; Design Interactive, Inc. – Oviedo, FL; Ecovative Design, LLC – Green Island, NY; GS Engineering, Inc. – Houghton, MI; Harmonia Holdings Group, LLC – Blacksburg, VA; Institute of Disabilities Research and Training (IDRT), Inc. – Wheaton, MD; Kutta Radios, Inc. – Phoenix, AZ; MBF Bioscience – Williston, VT; Modular Robotics – Boulder, CO; Ocean Renewable Power Company, LLC – Portland, ME; Orono Spectral Solutions, Inc. – Bangor, ME; Protochips, Inc. – Raleigh, NC; Syntonics, LLC – Columbia, MD; Tier1 Performance Solutions, LLC – Covington, KY; Torrey Hills Technologies, LLC – San Diego, CA
Individuals
Richard Flake, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL/XPP) – Wright-Patterson AFB, OH; Joe Hennessey, Ph.D., NSF SBIR/STTR Senior Advisor – Arlington, VA; Tizoc Loza, Northrop Grumman Corporation – Falls Church, VA
Hall of Fame
Aerovironment, Inc. – Monrovia, CA; Autonomous Technologies Corporation – Orlando, FL; Biogen-Idec – Weston, MA
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