Prior to the Congress taking their five week summer vacation, the Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship unanimously approved S.3362, the SBIR reauthorization bill. Congress reconvenes on September 8 and, in this humble observer’s view, there is virtually no hope that the full Senate will act on this legislation before the program lapses at the September 30 fiscal year end. And even if the full Senate were to pass the bill, what are the chances that a Senate/House conference would be able to reconcile the huge disparities between their two versions of the reauthorization legislation prior to September 30? ZIP, Zero, Nada! This could mean that the SBIR program will continue as currently structured into the next fiscal year under a continuing resolution (CR) - or, it could mean the program lapses. There are some, maybe many, in the Congress, the agencies and elsewhere who would be happy to see the SBIR program go away.

For an informed discussion of this and many other key SBIR topics, see Rick Shindell’s latest SBIR INSIDER newsletter at http://www.zyn.com/sbir/insider/sb-insider08-20-08.htm#five

In a move widely hailed by many influential business leaders, Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Thursday unveiled a $300 million investment fund intended to diversify the state's economy by committing money to startup companies, some troubled businesses and some that will help bolster Michigan's manufacturing base. The Invest Michigan! program is funded with $300 million of the state's $57 billion pension fund assets. It will be divided into the Growth Capital Fund and the Michigan Opportunities Fund:

Detroit News

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8.0 Making the Case for Entrepreneurship education (NDE NEws)

Maintaining long-term economic competitiveness—and keeping the high standards of living we enjoy in the US—hinges on developing and preparing a workforce for an increasingly global, knowledge-based economy. A recent article in Education Week argues that improvements made more than a decade ago in K-12 education are not sufficient and that entrepreneurship education programs are the best way to create a flexible workforce. The authors, Stephanie Bell-Rose of the Goldman Sachs Foundation and Thomas Payzant of Harvard University, contend that these programs will help augment traditional skills with those increasingly in demand—technological savvy, initiative, risk-taking, collaboration and opportunity recognition—and in doing so, they will help youth  become “continual learners.”

Read “The Case for Entrepreneurship Education” in the August 13 issue of Education Week.

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10.0 SBIR eligibility debate continues (NASVF NETNEWS)

Federal agencies with an annual external research and development (R&D) budget of over $100 million are required to allocate 2.5% of their extramural R&D dollars to the SBIR grant program. Similarly, federal agencies with extramural R&D budgets of over $1 billion are required to allocate 0.3% of their budgets to the STTR grant program. Currently, eleven agencies have SBIR programs and five agencies have STTR programs. The largest share of awards in both programs comes from the Department of Defense (DOD) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In 2006, agencies awarded approximately $2 billion in SBIR grants and approximately $225 million in STTR grants:
Wisconsin Technology Network

High-tech economy advocates in Kansas City are troubled by the disagreement which threatens to choke off helpful federal technology development grants. New developments, however, are offering prospects for improvement. Transforming cutting-edge innovations into commercial products requires money. Often a lot of money:
Kansas City Star

And across the State, in St. Louis the biotech firm Kereos might seem an ideal candidate to receive a special federal grant designed to encourage small businesses to pursue cutting-edge research. The 15-employee company is studying promising new methods to detect and treat cancer. But Kereos is excluded from the innovation-grant program, because the firm has raised $22 million in venture capital, making it about 70 percent controlled by outside investors:
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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