In my early career, I managed research and development contracts under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program as a contract specialist. One of the programs I worked on was for the Aeronautical Engineering division of the Air Force Research Laboratory. We awarded R&D contracts that worked on high-end technologies for Air Force jets. The SBIR program was designed to find and fund new ideas and cutting edge technology for use in a variety of industries.

Incidentally, the SBIR program is still going strong today (Google it or visit sbir.gov for more info). Our team’s expert on SBIR is Karen Pera. Anyway, back to the story.

As a contract specialist, I reviewed the SBIR proposals with the customer (usually a PhD or highly specialized technical expert) to decide which ideas and proposals were the best fit to address our needs from an engineering and innovation perspective. As you can imagine, there were more proposals submitted than we could ever fund – even though many were great ideas. One of my duties was to “debrief” the companies whose proposals were not selected for award. Not a super fun responsibility, but a great environment to learn just how easy it was (and still is) for a company to throw darts in the market without realizing it. (For more on this, see my post “Don’t Fish with a Net”)

One debriefing was with a company who was unsuccessful after submitting five SBIR proposals. During their debrief, they were frustrated by the process and asked me why they had not been winning. After a long discussion, it became apparent that their technology, while innovative and interesting, did not address the current need of the R&D focus of that office at that time (protecting pilots’ eyes from lasers coming from other planes). This problem was clearly detailed in the SBIR announcement (I even double checked). Their laser technology was innovative, but it did not address this specific problem. In the end, they realized that they were throwing a dart. Their laser’s capability was innovative, but it did not fix this stated problem we were trying to solve.

Now, imagine if this company had continued on their path of submitting proposal after proposal and had not gotten that feedback. Imagine if they hadn’t stopped what they were doing to ask why there were not winning…if they had just kept solving the wrong problem. Now, for the cynics who blame the government engineers and PhDs for not telling them, please note that they were getting hundreds of these proposals and only awarded a handful. Even with every effort to help these companies succeed in the SBIR program, it’s not realistic for the government team to tell them to stop submitting proposals for technology that is close to what they asked for but not quite. In fact, telling someone not to propose is a dangerous place for government folks because it opens the door to allegations of favoritism…and trust me, they don’t have the time or inclination to increase the profile of that particular argument.

The point: if you don’t understand the requirement. I mean REALLY understand it. You have three options:

1) Focus your efforts until you do understand it (then decide to pursue the opportunity or not)
2) Move on and find something else
3) Submit anyway and hope the government team will take the time to explain to you in detail that you are wasting your time.

Here’s a hint: Do not count on #3.