SBIR mills and the U.S. Department of Defense

Abstract Multiple winners of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards have come under scrutiny by some in the public sector who claim that so-called SBIR mills fail to commercialize from their funded research. We examine this issue using data on a sample of SBIR awards awarded between 1992 and 2001. Consistent with the critique, we find a negative association between the overall number of previous SBIR awards and commercialization from a current SBIR-funded project. However, when we consider the number of previous SBIR awards related to the current project’s technology, we find a positive association thus suggesting previous technologically related awards increase the probability of commercialization. We extend the analysis beyond commercialization to patents and scientific publications related to the current award and find similar patterns of results. Our results also reinforce the finding of others that multiple SBIR awards are a heterogeneous metric.