Two-Stage, Dynamic Data Envelopment Analysis of Technology Transition Performance in the U.S. Defense Sector

Abstract

This study aims to measure the technology transition performance of 252 small firms that won the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II awards from 2001 to 2010 and filed more than 15 patents (“elite DoD SBIR awardees”) and to explore how social, industrial, and geospatial contexts influence the performance. For the purpose, we first employ two-stage, dynamic Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) that incorporates network building sub-process as well as R&D and commercialization sub-processes and then utilize Tobit regression analysis. We find two implications. One of them is that more than a quarter of the elite DoD SBIR awardees are efficient and their efficiency scores of about a half are higher than 60%. The other is that their strong networks with big-sized funders and their high-tech concentration are positively associated with the technology transition performance whereas locational factors are not significantly related with the performance.