In fiscal year 2004, the Director of the Department of Defense
Small Business Technology and Industrial Base Office (SBTIBO) requested
that the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a division of the
RAND Corporation, examine the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) Small
Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The purpose of the research
project was to provide DoD with insights into the current status of its
SBIR program in terms of the department’s transformational technology
priorities, innovation, and the small business defense industrial base.
Following that initial assessment, the project’s objective became the
recommendation of policy options for making the DoD SBIR program more
responsive to the needs of the department. This documented briefing
provides both a record of the research that was conducted in the second
half of 2004 and the recommendations that resulted from it.