TY  - JOUR
AU  - Link,Albert N.
AU  - Ruhm,Christopher J.
TI  - Bringing Science to Market: Commercializing from NIH SBIR Awards
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14057
PY  - 2008
Y2  - June 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14057
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14057.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Albert Link
Department of Economics
Bryan School, UNCG
P.O. Box 26165
Greensboro, NC  27402-6165
E-Mail: al_link@uncg.edu

Christopher Ruhm
Department of Economics
Bryan School, UNCG
P.O. Box 26165
Greensboro, NC  27402-6165
Tel: 336/334-5148
Fax: 336/334-4089
E-Mail: chrisruhm@uncg.edu
AB  - We offer empirical information on the correlates of commercialization activity for research projects funded through the U.S. National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award program.  Based on this analysis we suggest possible recommendations for improving this aspect of the performance of NIH's SBIR program.  Specifically, we estimate a model of the probability of commercialization as a function of the project's ability to attract additional developmental funding, along with other control variables.  We find that additional developmental funding from non-SBIR federal sources and from own internal sources are important predictors of commercialization success, relatively more so than additional developmental funding from venture capitalists.  We also find, among other things, that university involvement in the underlying research increases the probability of commercialization.  Thus, these factors should be considered by NIH when making awards, if increased commercialization is an objective.
ER  -