The Small Business Innovation Development Act of 1982 created the Small Business Innovation Research(SBIR)program to stimulate technological innovation, to use small businesses of 500 or fewer employees to meet federal RD needs, to foster and encourage participation of minority and disadvantaged persons in technological innovation, and to increase private sector commercialization of innovations derived from federal RD. In 1983, this set-aside program totaled $45 million. The SBIR program grew to nearly $2 billion by 2008 when Congress failed to reauthorize it. For several years it survived through a series of multi-month extensions, and at the end of December 2011 it was finally reauthorized for another six years.
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