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business with? Have they done it cooperatively or have they re- 

 sisted or what? 



Mr. Rezendes. For SBIR, in order to participate you have to 

 have 500 employees or less. So, the large businesses are out. How- 

 ever, there are partnerships in SBIR projects between small busi- 

 nesses and large businesses as subcontractors which they are al- 

 lowed to participate in. So, they can participate in the program, but 

 in a subcontracting role, large businesses. 



Mr. Thompson, I guess my point is are those six companies that 

 we identified potentially as the largest contract, are they pursuing 

 more work that would ultimately hurt the smaller businesses or 

 are they accepting the participation by the smaller businesses in 

 this program as something that is necessary and reasonable? 



Mr. Glover. I think we have to look at the large firms' approach 

 to this. I think most large businesses and I cannot address the spe- 

 cific six companies that are doing the most for the Government, but 

 most large firms like the SBIR Program. Quite fi-ankly, the Japa- 

 nese companies like the SBIR Program. They do more shopping 

 over here to find our technology than our own companies do. But 

 by and large, big firms like the SBIR technolo^ because it is a 

 great place to find innovative, new ideas, breakthrough ideas. So, 

 when the SBIR award winners come out, the venture capitalists 

 and large firms look to see what is there to commercialize. So, it 

 has been a verv successfiil program. 



Mr. Neal. Congressman Thompson, one thing I want to empha- 

 size is that the key in terms of expanding the number of small 

 businesses that participate rests with the contracting officers and 

 the agencies. They identify those opportunities that are available 

 to the small businesses. Now as a large business operator, you will 

 find the large businesses will go after everv opportunity where they 

 can increase their revenues. So, it is in tneir own best interest to 

 go after each contracting opportunity. 



But the agencies have to be very careful and the agencies have 

 demonstrated that once they have been given goals and targets to 

 shoot toward that they have been very careful and work very dili- 

 gently to meeting those goals and targets and finding more and 

 more opportunities for small business. So, this incentive, this tar- 

 get that has been set out through this program has been very pro- 

 ductive for small businesses in identifying new opportunities for 

 them to be involved in Federal research and development. 



Mr. Thompson. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Chairman ToRKiLDSEN. Thank vou, Mr. Thompson. Mr. Fields. 



Mr. Fields. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Neal, what percent- 

 age of minority participation — has there been an increase and to 

 what degree has that increase been as it relates to this program? 



Mr. Neal. In our review of the program, we realize that one of 

 the large areas where we have a lot of work that we have left to 

 do would be with minority research and development firms. We 

 have discovered that they are underrepresented on the whole and 

 what we have been doing is looking at our programs at augment 

 the SBIR and STTR Program to find more effective ways to reach 

 out to the minority business community. 



In fact, we have contracted with a small ad agency to go out and 

 develop for us a strategy for reaching out to more small minority 



