NFIB

Hip to Success
08/ 26/ 2002

by Lisa Waddle

How trendy are you? As a reader of this magazine, you're more of a trendsetter than you think.

That's not an attempt to pat ourselves on the back, although we hope you think MyBusiness is a pretty hip resource guide. The truth is, if you're a small business owner, you're part of a worldwide trend.

"Entrepreneurship has gone mainstream," says Tim Petersen, managing director of the Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan Business School. "That's a trend we expect to continue."

Consider that last year, despite the recession and crash of many dotcom companies, the entrepreneurial rate in the U.S. was 11.7 percent, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. That means nearly 12 percent of the U.S. adult population was involved in the start-up of a company, or a business that's less than four years old. Compare that to 1999, when the rate was 8.4 percent. Elsewhere in the world, Mexico showed the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity, at 18 percent. India showed an average of 11 percent, while Japan showed 6 percent.

An additional sign small business ownership is a trend with staying power, according to Petersen: "Entrepreneurial studies" is now the subject of courses at more than 100 universities, and hundreds more community colleges.

Even the big guys are jumping on the trend: large corporations are increasingly looking to--and adopting--the small business style of doing business, breaking their workforces into smaller teams, instituting flexibility in their systems and marketing themselves in a Main Street way.

To keep your company viable, you need to keep up with the latest small business trends. Some or all of these trends hold the key to your continued existence and success, however you define it.

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This article originally appeared in the August/September 2002 issue of MyBusiness magazine.

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