Surviving the Defense Industry: New Entrants and Small Business Graduation

Join us as we present the results and recommendations from a recent report that tracks businesses new to the federal contracting arena from 2001-2016, otherwise known as new entrants, using publicly available contracting data from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS). A panel discussion will follow to discuss the government’s recent efforts and results in attracting and retaining new vendors in federal contracting. The panel will include relevant perspectives from both government and industry.

The report analyzes firm-level information and evaluates entrances, exits, and status changes among newly entered federal vendors with the purpose of comparing challenges faced by small businesses with those of larger ones. The final results compare the survival rates between small and non-small new entrants contracting with the federal government and calculate the graduation rates for those small new entrants who grew in size during the observation period and survived after ten years.

This event is made possible through general support to CSIS.