The Defense Department needs innovation now — and too often the best new technology from America’s small business innovators dies before it can become a program of record for the military, said the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering.
Heidi Shyu said the DOD spends over $2 billion annually on Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR, in a variety of technology areas.
“I’m personally engaging with small businesses, small business roundtables to understand the impediments in doing business with them and what are the impediments that they see that we can help them out [with] in terms of removing the roadblocks,” said Shyu yesterday at the National Defense Industrial Association’s science and technology conference in Hawaii.