Little Rock to be one of first nine stops on SBA tour
by March 30, 2016 7:20 pm 163 views
Little Rock will be among the first nine stops in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s National Road Tour to champion STEM innovation.
The SBA announced the touring schedule on March 28, clarifying that the newly announced dates will run from April through the end of June with more dates to be announced at a later time.
This second annual tour will be the beginning of a 20-state journey led by the SBA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs with participation from 11 other federal agencies.
“Last year’s SBA Road Tour was a huge success and made it possible for us to engage thousands of small innovative firms across the nation,” said John Williams, SBA Director of Innovation and Technology.
This year’s SBIR Road Tour, “Seeding America’s Future Innovations,” is a national outreach effort targeting advanced technology communities, including women-owned and minority-owned small businesses in states that have underutilized funding opportunities through these programs. Annually, the SBIR and STTR programs, sometimes called America’s largest seed fund, provide $2.5 billion in early stage funding to small businesses in the STEM fields.
The first tour stop will take place on April 4-6, 2016, when the SBA and 11 fellow agencies participate in the 2016 Gulf Coast Regional SBIR-STTR conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. The tour continues the week of April 18th with Little Rock its second stop, followed by Nashville, Atlanta, and Greenville, South Carolina.
The remaining four will be held during the week of June 27 with visits to Laramie, Wyoming; Omaha, Nebraska; Wichita, Kansas; and Oklahoma City.
Each SBIR Road Tour stop will be hosted by a local organization committed to supporting technology-based entrepreneurship, and will provide attendees with a face-to-face opportunity to talk directly to federal agency program managers and decision makers from many agencies including the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Health and Human Services’ National Institute of Health.
The highly competitive SBIR/STTR programs together account for more than 150,000 awards totaling approximately $40 billion, and have provided seed funding to companies including Qualcomm, iRobot, Symantec, and Genzyme.
The National Road Tour website has more information on the SBIR Road Tour, including a schedule of states and participating agencies.