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NewswireToday - /newswire/ -
East Hartford, CT, United States, 04/24/2007 - The Connecticut SBIR Office will award 40 technology idea assessment reports to Connecticut entrepreneurs, small high-tech businesses & innovative small manufacturers that present promising ideas. Winners to be announced at upcoming June 20-21 Event.
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CT SBIR Office to Fund Competition for 40 Technology Assessment Reports, "Showstoppers to Commercialization"
The Connecticut SBIR Office, an initiative of the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, Inc. (CCAT), announced today that it will award 40 idea assessment reports to Connecticut entrepreneurs, small high-tech businesses and innovative small manufacturers that present promising ideas. Winners of the assessments will be announced at their upcoming June 20-21 SBIR/NALI conference, "The Future of Manufacturing is INNOVATIONTM" at the Pratt & Whitney Air Museum/Hangar in East Hartford. The 40 awards are valued at $80,000.
"These reports help Connecticut's small high-tech companies and innovative manufacturers use their time and money wisely so they can avoid developing products that either have no market or may have too much competition to be viable," according to Deb Santy, Director of the SBIR Office. "We funded 15 reports in April 2005 at our SBIR Bioscience event as a pilot. Since it went over extremely well, we plan to fund 40 more. The high tech idea assessment reports will go to the best and most innovative, often-risky, technology ideas that have commercialization potential. These reports, focused on evaluating ideas at their earliest stage, can be used in the marketing sections of future SBIR proposals, to obtain all other kinds of traditional financing or simply used as validation for new product development."
Foresight Science and Technology (FST), the choice of many federal SBIR agencies, will select the winners and provide the assessment reports. Winners will be announced at the conference. According to FST, their Go/NoGo™ report is an early stage weeding tool, designed to identify "showstoppers to commercialization" before resources are spent commercializing a technology that is unlikely to succeed. As independent technology audits, a report can serve as an objective statement of merit -- a great tool to help a small business gain funding since it identifies promising technology ideas in terms of future products and global marketability.
Awards will be made to for-profit companies that present promising ideas (not existing products or prototypes). Based largely on rules developed by the federal SBIR program, the company must be headquartered in Connecticut, be at least 51% US owned and employ no more than 500 people.
The CT SBIR Office, established in late 2004, is an initiative of the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, Inc. (CCAT). CCAT is a non-stock, tax exempt corporation incorporated in May 2004, and is funded under federal and state sponsored grants to develop a national center that addresses military and civilian industrial manufacturing needs; promotes energy planning and policy initiatives; stimulates innovation; and enhances workforce development issues concerning technology competitiveness.
The CT SBIR Office, which is funded by the Office for Workforce Competitiveness, was created to help small businesses in Connecticut capture federal SBIR grants of between $100,000 and $750,000 for developing promising technologies. The CT SBIR Office is located at the CCAT Headquarters: 111 Founders Plaza; Suite 1002, East Hartford, CT 06108. For more information contact Deb Santy at 860-282-4209
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mlondon[.]ccat.us 
