Nebraska SBIR June Newsletter

SBIR Proposal Writing Basics: Writing your own topic (sort of) at NIST SBIR Program

Gail & Jim Greenwood, Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.

This time last month, we were not even discussing the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as an SBIR agency, since its FY07 SBIR budget was so limited that they decided to only award Phase 2 proposals this year. However, NIST’s SBIR program has returned, and with a very interesting twist. Because it may represent a new and different opportunity for you in the SBIR program, we decided to focus on the FY08 NIST SBIR program in this article.

NIST plans to have two Phase 1 SBIR solicitations in FY08. The first will be along the lines of what they’ve had in the past: fairly specific topics on which they want only proposals that clearly and consistently address the needs and problems specified in the topic.

The second solicitation will be based around NIST-held patents that you and your fellow SBIR competitors want to further research and then commercialize. However, you will need to find the patent of interest BEFORE the solicitation is assembled so that the patent can be specified in the solicitation. Therefore, over the next several months, you need to check NIST’s website (http://nist.gov), and seek out the list of NIST-held patents. Scan it over, highlight any that look interesting, and then follow up with the researcher who generated the IP behind the patent to see if this looks like something you want to pursue. Make sure to do at least a back-of-the-envelope assessment of the potential Phase III commercialization opportunity so you are assured of pursuing something with a payoff.

Then, if you are still interested in this patent, contact the NIST SBIR program office to indicate your interest. You probably will iterate with them a few times, and then with a bit of luck, the patent you’re interested in will appear in the NIST 2nd FY08 solicitation to be issued around October 15th. You will then prepare your proposal, using all the juicy information you gleaned while checking out the patent and its Phase III potential, and be prepared to negotiate both a contract and a licensing agreement to the patent if NIST selects your proposal for funding.

There are several important features to this NIST initiative:

You select the technology. NIST is basically asking you to suggest a patent of theirs that you think has Phase III commercialization potential. This is not the way that NIST usually does things: as a contract agency, they usually tell you what topics they want you to propose solutions for. With this greater flexibility comes good and bad: you get to decide what has merit, but you also have to make a greater effort to ferret out a NIST patent with commercial potential.

You have to do a lot of homework before the solicitation is prepared. This is a very unusual situation in which NIST wants you to search through its patents, find something that interests you, and then contact them to explain why that patent should be included in their special solicitation. We often encourage SBIR/STTR proposers to begin work on a proposal before the agency’s solicitation comes out, and that advice is VERY relevant here.

You will still have competition. We envision competition to come in at least three places in the special NIST solicitation. First, you will compete with other companies to get the patent in which you are interested included in the solicitation. Therefore, you must be prepared to convince NIST that the patent you’re interested in has a high chance of commercialization success and otherwise is worthy of NIST support. Second, once the patent you like is spelled out in the solicitation, anyone can submit a proposal on it. Therefore, your proposal has to be well done to show that you have the best opportunity to perform the Phase I and II research and ultimately commercialize the technology. Finally, your proposal will have to compete for NIST’s limited SBIR funding. NIST is one of the smaller SBIR agencies, and therefore will only be able to fund a limited number of proposals under this special solicitation. Your proposal needs to make a compelling case for why it should be a priority use for those limited funds.

This special NIST solicitation provides a unique opportunity for SBIR companies. Just make sure that NIST’s interests and goals are consistent with yours, in terms of the types of projects that they’d like to see come out of this solicitation.