SBIR Proposal Writing Basics

SBIR Proposal Writing Basics: Three Goals for Your Phase 1 Proposal & Project

Gail & Jim Greenwood, Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.

The latest SBIR Phase 1 solicitation from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) does a terrific job of summarizing what you want to convey in your Phase 1 proposal and accomplish in the subsequent project. NIST writes that the purpose of Phase I is “to determine the technical feasibility of the research, preliminary commercialization potential of the proposed effort, and the quality of the awardee’s performance.” Let’s look at each of these important goals of your Phase 1, which are relevant to all SBIR/STTR agencies.

Hopefully you are well aware that the main goal of a Phase 1 project is to determine the feasibility of an innovative approach to solving an important problem. It is expected in a Phase 1 SBIR or STTR project that your innovation is unproven, whether that be in terms of its basic functionality or its adaptability to the specific problem and surrounding environment. SBIR/STTR Phase 1 is not for funding sure bets or proven concepts, but to give you a little bit of money to prove your technically risky idea works and solves the problem to which you are applying it. You need to have a conclusion about feasibility by the end of Phase 1—never propose to continue the feasibility study in Phase 2.

A second important goal of the Phase 1 project is to further your understanding of the commercialization potential of your innovation. During the Phase 1 project, you need to do additional commercialization research, because you should have done a significant amount of work before you wrote the Phase 1 proposal. More and more the agencies are expecting you to have a logical and viable commercialization plan sketched out by the time you are writing and submitting the Phase 1 proposal. Therefore, during the Phase 1 project, they are expecting you to make significant modifications and refinements to that plan. It is still “preliminary” because nothing is cast in stone here, but you need to have a clear vision and path and be ready to communicate that in the more elaborate Phase 2 proposal and commercialization plan.

The third important goal of Phase 1 is showing the SBIR/STTR awarding agency that you are “good people.” If you are a newcomer or novice to SBIR/STTR, then the agency likely does not know you beyond what you have included in your Phase 1 proposal. If you do a good job of presenting yourself and your capabilities in that proposal, then the agency may entrust you with a modest Phase 1 award of $100,000 to $150,000. They will then watch to see what you do and how you conduct yourself during the Phase 1 project, and use those observations in deciding if you can be trusted with a much larger Phase 2 award and the more intense work required during the Phase 2 effort. You need to do what you said in the Phase 1 proposal that you would do, and did it with the people and other resources you said you would use.

So you need to keep all three of these goals in mind as you are conducting your Phase 1 project. They all should influence what you do and how you go about it.

But did you notice, as we discussed the three goals of Phase 1, that we think you should not be waiting until you have the Phase 1 award to begin pursuing these goals? You need to incorporate the goals into your thinking and writing as you prepare the Phase 1 proposal. That proposal must demonstrate that you understand this is to be a feasibility study (and what you have to do to prove your innovation’s feasibility), that you have already done some significant research on the commercialization potential, and that you are careful, conscientious, honest, and deliberate in what you are proposing to do and how you will do it.