Innovation procurement has no statutory teeth: SBRI is a shadow of SBIR

The US SBIR programme mandates that federal agencies with extramural R&D budgets over $100m allocate 3.2% to small-business innovation contracts. The UK's SBRI (now Innovate UK Contracts for Innovation) has no mandatory target and a budget pegged at roughly 1% of 2015–16 reference levels; two decades of evaluations (Cambridge Industrial Innovation Policy, David Connell's reviews) recommend a set-aside, and departments still face no requirement. ARIA covers frontier R&D push, not procurement pull.

Procurement is the demand-side innovation lever the UK persistently leaves unpulled. SBIR seeded Qualcomm, iRobot and much of US defence-tech; a statutory UK equivalent would give deep-tech startups first customers at zero net new spend, complementing ARIA and record R&D budgets.

A legislated SBIR-style set-aside (2–3% of extramural departmental R&D/procurement budgets in defence, health, energy and transport) run as phased challenge contracts with published uptake statistics.

// State-led: Instrument: legislation mandating 2-3% SBIR-style set-aside of departmental extramural R&D budgets.

A statutory SBIR-style set-aside is well-evidenced and near-costless, but SBRI already exists in weak form, stakes are moderate, and nothing dates the reform.