Exercises — Chapter 20: SBIR/STTR

Work these with a technology or product idea in mind (yours, or one you can imagine commercializing). Even if you have no startup ambition, do Parts A and M — the commercialization discipline (articulating the real-world path to impact) strengthens any proposal's significance case, and the dual-test mindset transfers.

How to use these: Part A checks recall; Part B applies the chapter to concrete SBIR/STTR decisions; Part C asks you to create at a founder's level (technical objectives, a commercialization plan); Part M interleaves earlier chapters. Answers to selected exercises (★) are in the back matter.

Part A — Recall and Understand

A1. ★ State the chapter's threshold concept in your own words. What are the two tests an SBIR/STTR proposal must pass, and which one do researchers most often neglect?

A2. Describe the three phases (I, II, III): what each funds, the rough scale of I and II, and the key fact about Phase III funding.

A3. Who is eligible to apply for SBIR/STTR, and who is not? Why is the funding called non-dilutive?

A4. ★ State the principal difference between SBIR and STTR, including the research-institution partnership requirement and the PI-employment rule.

A5. Distinguish the two agency styles — topic/mission-driven versus investigator-initiated — and name an example agency of each.

A6. List five elements a strong commercialization plan must address.

A7. What registrations must an SBIR applicant complete, and why are they "binary gates" (Chapter 19)?

Part B — Apply

B1. ★ SBIR or STTR? For each, choose the better program and justify in two sentences: - (a) A six-person company with its own engineers and lab that can do the R&D in-house. - (b) A professor commercializing a lab invention who wants to keep her faculty post and the lab's deep involvement. - (c) A founder who needs a university's specialized facility for the core research but intends to build the company's own team over time. - (d) A company that wants to subcontract the majority of the work to a university.

B2. Pick the agency. A founder has a medical-imaging AI technology. Name the most likely agency style and approach for (a) a defense application versus (b) a clinical/health application, and explain how the writing differs.

B3. ★ Diagnose the commercialization plan. A draft says: "The global market for this technology is \$40 billion and growing. We will capture a small share, which will be very profitable." List everything wrong with this, and rewrite it into the opening of a credible, bottom-up market case.

B4. Plan the ladder. For a technology idea, sketch what Phase I should prove (the make-or-break feasibility question), what Phase II would then develop, and how Phase III would be financed — showing you designed Phase I to feed Phase II.

B5. Eligibility check. A startup is 60% owned by a venture-capital firm. What must the founder verify before applying, and why is "the technology is great" not enough?

Part C — Analyze and Create

C1. ★ Write Phase I technical objectives. For your technology, write 2–4 specific, testable Phase I technical objectives that would establish feasibility — narrow enough to achieve in a short Phase I, decisive enough to justify a Phase II.

C2. Build the commercialization plan. Using the Section 20.4 template, draft a commercialization plan for your technology: market (bottom-up), value proposition, competition, IP, path to market, team, and Phase III financing. Where you'd need real customer interviews, name who you'd talk to.

C3. ★ Integrated investment case. Take a purely technical project description and revise its framing so the commercial opportunity motivates the technical objectives ("we must prove X because the market requires Y"). Show that the science and the business case are one argument, not two.

C4. Agency-fit memo. For a technology that touches more than one agency's mission (like AquaSense's sensor), write a one-page memo choosing the single best agency to target first and justifying it by fit and commercialization logic — and say what you'd hold in reserve.

C5. Customer-discovery plan. Design a lightweight plan to talk to 5–10 potential customers before writing your proposal: who they are, what you'd ask, and how their answers would sharpen your market, value proposition, and pricing. Explain why this evidence beats a market-report number.

Part M — Mixed and Interleaved Review

M1. ★ (Ch 19 + 20) How do SBIR/STTR's registration gates and (for grant agencies) compliance rules resemble those of other government grants, and what second test does SBIR add that program grants don't center?

M2. (Ch 9 + 20) How does a Phase I proposal use the approach/feasibility craft of Chapter 9? Why is "prove feasibility" a deliberately narrower goal than "do the whole project"?

M3. ★ (Ch 14 + 20) In what sense is a commercialization plan a form of the impact-and-sustainability thinking of Chapter 14 — carrying a technology beyond the grant to lasting real-world effect?

M4. (Ch 16–17 + 20) The NIH and NSF both run SBIR/STTR. How would applying for an NIH SBIR resemble, and differ from, applying for an NIH R01 (Chapter 16)?

M5. (Ch 13 + 20) SBIR reviewers assess the team on both technical and business capability. Revise a team/capacity description to convince a reviewer the company can not only build the technology but commercialize it.

M6. (Ch 2 + 20) Why is contacting the SBIR program manager before submitting especially valuable at topic-driven agencies? Connect to the cultivation and program-officer lessons of Chapter 2.

🪞 Metacognitive check-in. If you're technically trained, watch for the reflex that the "business stuff" is lesser work — that real rigor lives only in the science. That reflex is exactly what makes brilliant technologists fail at SBIR and at startups. Notice it, and ask: am I willing to bring the same intellectual seriousness to understanding my customers, competitors, and market that I bring to the technology? The founders who say yes are the ones whose innovations actually reach the people they could help.