• Only the largest five SBIR funding agencies participate in the STTR program:  DOD, NIH, NASA, DOE (Energy), and NSF.

• The Phase I period of performance is usually one year (instead of six months).

• For DOD, NIH, and NASA, the Principal Investigator may be primarily employed by the partnering research institution and does not have to be primarily employed by the small firm during the period of performance.  (Note that this is not true for NSF and DOE, the other two STTR agencies.)

• The small firm only has to do 40% of the work in-house for Phase I and Phase II (vs. two-thirds on a Phase I SBIR and one-half on a Phase II SBIR).  The non-profit research partner must do at least 30%.  The remaining 30% may be done by either party, or by others.

formal contractual agreement between the small firm and the non-profit research partner must be signed for an STTR (no such formal agreement is required for collaborations on SBIRs).  That agreement includes provisions for how the resulting intellectual property rights will be shared.