Development burdens: state contact centers, administrative burden, and economic development policy

Many have studied how technology transfer policies and innovations affect economic growth. Much of that growth comes from small business entrepreneurs’ scientific innovation and job creation thereby suggesting that barriers to entrepreneurial success, such as administrative burdens, threaten economic development. Public management scholarship argues that administrative burdens decrease the take-up of public services among inexperienced groups but have yet to examine these dynamics among entrepreneurial clientele. Moreover, little is known about the role of external third-party organizations in mitigating administrative burdens of clients despite the frequency of these organizations across myriad policy interventions including STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) technological development. This study poses two questions: (1) Whether the presence of external assistance organizations nearby increases the likelihood of individual beneficiaries progressing in program participation and (2) Whether the effectiveness of assistance centers varies by the technology startup environment of the state. Empirical findings suggest that technology startups are more likely to persist in the technology transfer pipeline of Small Business Administration (SBA)’s STTR Program when assistance centers are nearby. Additionally, assistance centers are most effective in environments where entrepreneurial success is less likely.