Assisting Tech Innovators

I first met Charles (Chuck) Shoopman a few years ago when I was helping to launch the Kingsport Office of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (KOBSE). Chuck had an idea for a Tennessee SBIR Assistance Center. SBIR (Small Business Innovation and Research) grants, as well as STTRs, which tie into university or federal research institutions, are a way for the federal government to foster innovation for a variety of needs. Chuck turned his vision into a reality with a group of East Tennessee partners.

When Charles (Chuck) Shoopman wanted to launch the Tennessee SBIR Proposal Assistance Center, he talked to a variety of partners. I heard his pitch at the 52nd Annual Governor’s Conference for Economic Development in September 2005, after I was introduced by Alex Money, a former colleague at AEDC (Arnold Engineering Development Center at Arnold Air Force Base), and thought it was a wonderful way to put expertise to work helping entrepreneurs wade through the morass of key federal research grants.

Chuck got the SBIR Assistance Center off the ground in January 2006, in collaboration with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the NNSA Y-12 Facility, Technology 2020, the Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley, the East Tennessee Economic Council, and Integrated Manufacturing Technology Initiative. Chuck is a Team Leader in Economic Development for The University of Tennnessee’s Institute for Public Service (IPS), which works alongside the UT Center for Industrial Services (an agency of IPS) that operats the Tennessee SBIR Proposal Assistance Center. 

Confused yet? Don’t worry, I’m just giving context ;)

Throughout 2006, according to an IPS release,  “these partnering organizations helped Tennessee small businesses secure almost $6 million of SBIR grants to fund research on new products and processes.” In 2007 they did even more, bringing our state’s woeful apply and win status up to an almost respectable level.

But there was more to do, as Tennessee lagged behind in SBIR / STTR submittals and, hence, awards. This is especially lame given Tennessee’s wealth of federal research facilities (DoE, DoD and many others are well represented in the State). From an entrepreneurial standpoint, I’m not a huge fan of STTRs, primarily because most higher education institutions appear to manipulate the percentage of the grant funding needed for things extraneous to the actual tech transfer heavily in their favor (ROI for an STTR is much better if an entrepreneur engages with a federal research facility, but that opinion may be skewed by having worked at one).

Anyway, in 2008, the Tennessee SBIR Proposal Assistance Center and Chuck’s economic development team are partnering with the Technology Development Corporation (TTDC) to help entrepreneurs and businesses across Tennessee interested in learning about SBIR / STTR grants to learn about new “Phase 0” assistance opportunities that TTDC is offering for Phase 1 grant applicants.

A series of meetings have been held in Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville and Johnson City; I attended the latter two, as Johnson City is close to my adopted hometown of Kingsport (we leased in Johnson City when we first picked northeast Tennessee as a place to call home) and the Knoxville event provided an opportunity to view the presentation with an audience in the area of the state that’s done the best job of applying for / winning SBIR grants.

All I can say is kudos to Chuck and Eric Cromwell, TTDC’s President and CEO, for putting these events together and to TTDC for funding the Phase 0 grants (if even for only $100,000 for the first round - let’s hope they run through that quickly).

For a few more details on TTDC, see this blog posting. 

A podcast of a key portion of the Knoxville event is available here.