Mining the Small Business Resource: Issues and Recommendations (2007)

Small technology firms with less than 500 employees now employ 54.8 percent of all scientists and engineers in US industrial R&D. However, these nearly 6,000 scientists and engineers are able to obtain only 4.3 percent of extramural government R&D dollars.1 This deficit may help explain the signal failure of most major defense programs to realize advanced technology goals – a problem repeatedly documented in recent years by GAO studies, and acknowledged by DoD and even prime contractors themselves. Global competition for technology development makes this especially important for DOD. Today, both India and China graduate more scientists and engineers than does this nation. [via]

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