This article was originally published in the Hill on September 9, 2022. Read the entire piece here.
Innovative small businesses are engines of economic growth. Without a steady churn of young companies to displace old and hidebound incumbents, fewer new ideas and technologies would come to market and America’s national competitiveness would suffer.
The federal government plays an important role in ensuring startups beat the odds against their more established competitors, yet one look at America’s declining rates of business dynamism suggests something has gone terribly wrong.
The corruption of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program is a case in point. Marketed as “America’s Seed Fund,” SBIR is considered America’s flagship program for helping innovative startups get off the ground. Since its establishment in 1982, SBIR has distributed over $40 billion dollars through competitive awards and contracts to young companies engaged in early-stage research and development, helping to commercialize new technologies while meeting specific federal R&D needs.
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