Summary: The United States depends heavily on innovation through research and development. The Small Business Innovation Development Act of 1982, which authorized the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program, emphasizes the benefits of technological innovation and the ability of small businesses to transform the results of research into new products. As the program has matured in the 1990s, congressional concern has focused on the companies' ability to commercialize the results of their research and on the concentration of awards in certain states and companies--commonly known as "frequent winners." This report discusses the (1) distribution of awards by company and geographic area, (2) extent to which federal agencies are considering commercial potential and the program's other goals in making their awards, and (3) previous evaluations of the SBIR program to identify opportunities to improve measurements of the program's outcomes. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Federal Research: Evaluation of Small Business Innovation Research Can Be Strengthened, by Susan D. Kladiva, Associate Director for Energy, Resources, and Science Issues, before the Subcommittee on Technology, House Committee on Science. GAO/T-RCED-99-198, June 17 (11 pages).
