What Happens if One of Your Specific Aims Fails?
Welcome back to The Innovator’s Labyrinth, where I share practical strategies to help science and technology founders find their way to nondilutive funding.
What if your experiment doesn’t work?
It can feel counterintuitive to talk about what might go wrong in a grant proposal.
After all, you’re trying to convince reviewers that your project deserves funding. Why give them another reason to doubt you?
Because your reviewers already know that research doesn’t always go according to plan.
For NIH SBIR/STTR applications, you’re actually expected to think about that uncertainty. NIH asks applicants to discuss potential problems, alternative strategies, and benchmarks for success in the Research Strategy. For projects at an early stage, applicants should also explain how they’ll manage the high-risk aspects of the proposed work.
In other words, the goal isn’t to convince reviewers that nothing can go wrong. It’s to show them that you’ll know what to do if it does.
Don’t build a row of dominoes
Imagine that Aim 2 can only begin if Aim 1 produces exactly the result you expect. Then Aim 3 depends completely on Aim 2.
What happens if Aim 1 gives you an unexpected result?
Suddenly, the rest of the project may have nowhere to go.
That’s why, when possible, your aims shouldn’t be unnecessarily dependent on one another. NIH’s own guidance recommends designing aims so that even a null result can still contribute useful information and allow the project to continue.
For a Phase I SBIR/STTR proposal, this is especially important. You’re trying to establish feasibility and reduce uncertainty before investing more time and money into development. NIH asks Phase I applicants to identify the technical questions they need to answer and establish clear, measurable milestones for each aim.
So instead of thinking only:
“What result do I want?”
Also ask
What will this result help me decide?
What will I learn if the result is different from what I expect?
Can the rest of the project still move forward, or does everything depend on this one result?
A useful aim doesn’t have to guarantee the result you hope for. It should help you answer an important question, reduce risk, and make a better decision about what comes next. In other words, your aims should focus on what you need to learn, rather than simply describe a list of activities.
Where should the backup plan go?
You don’t need to cram every possible failure scenario onto your single Specific Aims page. Use that page to communicate what you plan to accomplish, your expected outcomes, and the milestones that will tell you whether you succeeded. Then use the Approach section of your Research Strategy to explain potential problems, alternative strategies, and how you will manage risk.
That is exactly where NIH’s application instructions ask applicants to address those issues.
The takeaway is simple:
Your reviewers don’t need you to predict every result. They need to see that you understand what the results will mean—and that you have a path forward.
Building your Specific Aims page?
My Specific Aims, Simplified toolkit walks first-time SBIR/STTR applicants through the strategy and structure of the Specific Aims page, with section-by-section guidance, checklists, and a working template to help you get started.
Explore Specific Aims, Simplified
Until next time,
Sarah Soliz
Labyrinth Consulting
Find your way to funding.