Voices from Academia SBIR at the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research

As the government’s primary disability research agency, the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) supports diverse research and development activities that benefit individuals with disability. In particular, its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program supports the development and commercialization of assistive products. While the National Academies of Science (NAS) has conducted repeated studies of the five largest federal SBIR programs (DOD, NIH, NSF, DOE, and NASA), there are few studies for smaller but still important federal SBIR programs. The current study evaluated NIDILRR’s SBIR program for the period 2006–2020. Evaluation comprised four parts: program performance worth (costs to develop and returns for commercialized assistive products), program performance value (importance of these assistive products), capacity building (agency actions to optimize program performance), and outcomes (proposed and achieved assistive products). Key findings: Significant worth (e.g., a high percentage of Phase II awards resulted in commercialized assistive products) and value (e.g., focus of Phase II awards and derived assistive products correlated strongly with disability demographics) were demonstrated. Capacity building had both strengths (e.g., provision of technical reviews to applicants benefitted many applicants) and weaknesses (e.g., provision of technical reviews post-competition did not benefit first-time applicants, constrained diversification of AT companies, and derived assistive products). Outcomes correlated with disability demographics but proposed and achieved assistive products were under-diversified. Recommendations were made to optimize NIDILRR’s important and generally high-performing SBIR program.