Industrial
Innovation and Partnerships Division (IIP)
The Directorate
for Engineering’s newly created division of Industrial Innovation
and Partnerships (IIP) serves the entire foundation by fostering
partnerships to advance technological innovation, and plays an important
role in the public-private innovation partnership enterprise.
One of the four
strategic goals of the Engineering Directorate is to effectively
invest in fundamental engineering innovation that has the potential
for high impact in meeting national and societal needs. The focus
of IIP is to successfully invest in engineering research and innovation
by leveraging federal, small business, industrial, university, state
and community colleges resources. Genuine partnerships are dynamic
and growing relationships based upon shared interests, trust, and
an evolving technical relationship. Partnerships require a vision
and performance goals and benchmarks, passionate and visionary leaders,
and partners bound by an essential interdependency and shared commitment
to hold them together. Partnerships should facilitate the sorts
of infrastructure that can sustain and nurture the spread of innovative
activity over the long term.
These infrastructures
are to educate and train human capital for the research enterprise
and the entrepreneurial aspects of innovation; develop the social
networks characterized by shared commitment and trust that embeds
the intellectual capital and know-how embodied in scientists and
engineers honed through advanced education and training; and to
build a base of operational support without which sustainable partnerships
cannot exist. This includes a diversified base of private investment,
the physical place to provide a context for incubation, technical,
management, and administrative support, laboratory and other capacity,
communications services, and reliable sources of capital. One end
of the innovation spectrum within the Directorate constitutes the
unsolicited research proposals with ideas generated by the academic
community to the other end with small business research proposals
aimed at pursuing opportunities to commercialize products and services.
IIP is home
to the two congressionally mandated small business research programs,
the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and the Small
Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program. Several programs in
the Directorate that have non-academic partnerships as an important
component to facilitate the engineering innovation process have
been brought under the IIP umbrella. Thus, IIP also manages the
Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) program, which stimulates innovation
by building partnerships across the scientific and engineering community.
In addition, the IIP leverages industrial support through two research
programs, the Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers (I/UCRC)
program and the Grants Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry
(GOALI) program.
The IIP Division
accepts only those proposals that are submitted in response to an
open solicitation and will not accept proposals for past solicitations
that are closed. Unsolicited proposals are not accepted except for
the GOALI program, where the proposals are submitted to the respective
disciplinary programs.
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