Congress has an opportunity to fix federal government policies on science commercialization. Last week, House Committee on Small Business Chairman Roger Williams (R-Texas) took an important step to that end, introducing a companion bill to the INNOVATE Act, which Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) introduced this year as Chair of the Senate Small Business Committee. Williams's bill could help reform the Small Business Innovation Research program and help nurture the next American tech giants.
Congress established the SBIR program in 1982 to commercialize science and turn startups into major companies. It can tout among its success stories Qualcomm, ViaSat, AeroVironment, and Anduril, all of which used SBIR funding to grow. The INNOVATE Act would reauthorize the SBIR program, which is due to expire at the end of the fiscal year, while strengthening commercialization requirements, improving the due diligence process for SBIR awardees to minimize malign foreign influence in the program, and attracting new entrants.
As part of the SBIR program’s previous reauthorization in 2022, Congress helped address serious national security flaws in the program. In 2021, the Pentagon found that multiple people receiving SBIR funding through the Department of Defense had then transferred the results of their research to Chinese academia and industry. The 2022 reauthorization addressed this problem by requiring agencies with SBIR programs to establish due diligence programs to ensure SBIR awards don’t go to companies with malign foreign ties. But other problems with the SBIR program remain, which the INNOVATE Act would solve.
