Optimal Contracted to Support SBA’s Regional Innovation Clusters Initiative

Date: August 18, 2010
Location: College Park, MD

Optimal Solutions Group, LLC (Optimal) has been contracted to work with the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) on the “Innovative Economies” Regional Cluster Initiative (RCI) support services project.

Innovation economies are marketing principles that rely on innovation—including knowledge, technology, and entrepreneurship innovations—as the central tenant to a growing economy. SBA is supporting two types of innovative economies: Regional Innovation Clusters and Advanced Defense Technologies. The seven Regional Innovation Clusters focus on providing business training, commercialization and technology transfer services, counseling, mentoring and other services that support the growth and development of small businesses in the cluster region.

The SBA also worked with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to identify areas around the country where regional innovation clusters can help meet critical defense technology needs. Three Advanced Defense Technology awardees will focus on providing business training, counseling, mentoring, matchmaking and other services to small businesses that focus on critical DoD technologies.

Optimal will support the SBA to identify best practices for small business integration and support, developing program evaluation framework and metrics, and monitoring and evaluating RCI awardees. Optimal will further assist in the evaluation and identification of best practices to ensure that the clusters will create sustainable job growth, be capable of competing on a national and global scale, and be able to continue attracting business investment.