Gail & Jim Greenwood, Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.

Copyright © 2001by Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.

We review a lot of Phase I SBIR and STTR proposals—we mean A LOT. Probably the most common comment that we make on those proposals is the simple two word question "so what?" This comment indicates that the writer has failed to address some indication or measure of the proposal’s significance or importance to the agency to which they are submitting. Since this is a common proposal writing error, let us explain further.

SBIR and STTR are very competitive programs—only one out of every 5 to 10 Phase I proposals gets funded. With such competition, your proposal has to show that it is extremely valuable or important—in other words, you need to make a compelling case that your proposal has significance. If you don’t do this, then the reader may ask themselves (as we often do) "so what?" which is a good indication that you’ve blown your chance of being one of the lucky few to get SBIR or STTR funding.

Significance in an SBIR/STTR proposal can come in several forms. First, you have to demonstrate that your proposal addresses a significant technical question that cannot be answered without the Phase I effort. This is what the feasibility study (the focus of a Phase I project) should be built on: overcoming the uncertainty of whether your innovation will work or not.

Second, significance comes in the form of its direct usefulness to the agency. This is most often a question raised in agencies that make their SBIR/STTR awards as contracts (versus grants, which we’ll address later). These are the agencies that plan to use the results of successful SBIR/STTR projects in their own programs. In this context, your SBIR/STTR proposal has to show that it addresses and solves a problem, need or opportunity that is critically important to one of this agency’s programs.

Third, significance comes in the form of this SBIR/STTR project’s value to non-agency end users and beneficiaries, whether they are in the private sector or in the public sector but outside the SBIR agency. Questions like "how valuable is this in reducing dependence on fossil fuels?" or "will this reduce the incidence of childhood leukemia?" are the types of things that define significance in this context. Societal importance, or value to a subset of society that is of particular interest to the agency (e.g., rural communities to the U.S. Dept of Agriculture) may be the primary issue here. This type of significance is most relevant to the SBIR/STTR agencies that make their awards as grants (versus contracts), although even the contracting agencies who want the SBIR/STTR innovation for their own internal agency use often also care about this "third party" significance.

Finally, significance comes up in every SBIR/STTR proposal when the writer makes a comparison between their approach and competing approaches, claims that some preliminary data suggest that this innovation has potential to succeed, or touts their Principal Investigator and participants as "the" perfect team for this project. These are elements of significance that can make or break a proposal in terms of its fundability.

What leads the reviewer to ask "so what?" often is the failure of the SBIR/STTR proposal writer to clearly indicate the significance or importance of the proposal with regard to one or more (and sometimes all) of these areas. Some writers simply fail to give the reader the ammo needed to conclude the significance of the proposed project (we attribute this to the writer not realizing what the reviewer is looking for, which means the writer either doesn’t understand this agency’s interests and/or its evaluation criteria—ask the agency if in doubt on either). In other cases, writers just state facts and then rely on the reader to interpret the facts as the reader wanted them interpreted, and draw the same conclusions about their significance. Unfortunately, SBIR/STTR reviewers often are overloaded with proposals to read, or are having to review them under less than ideal circumstances—under these typical conditions, the writer had better clearly state the significance of every critical point, and not hope that the reviewer will figure it out.

We recommend that you repeatedly ask yourself "so what?" as you write, and later review, your SBIR/STTR proposal. Ask this question from the perspective of a harried reviewer who is trying to grasp the value and importance of your proposal. If you find that the answer to "so what?" is not glaringly obvious, add to or modify the text and/or graphics to make your case about the significance of what you are proposing. Also, try highlighting key significant points by underlining them or putting them in bold type.